Tornado Brain

by Cat Patrick

“Colette,” she answered quietly.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. The question felt strange on my lips. I was practicing being empathetic.

  “I guess?” she said. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say next. I listened to the waves crash for a few seconds, thinking about it. But then Tess said, “I’m sad.” I heard the scratch of pencil on paper. I don’t know why, but I imagined that she was working on getting Colette’s eyes right. “Mom thinks I should go to art camp this summer. It’s in Boston and I could stay with Aunt Maureen. Mom says it’d be good for me to get away.”

  “Do you want to go?” I asked, feeling unsettled about the idea of Tess leaving. She was the only friend I had left. I’d be completely alone. Well, except I’d have Kai.

  “I don’t know,” Tess said. “I don’t know anything.”

  “You know more than I do.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel okay again,” she said sadly. “I hope so.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I mean, I hope you feel okay again soon. I hope I do, too.”

  “You will, Frankie,” Tess said.

  “We can’t know for sure,” I said because it was the truth, but Tess got quiet. I wondered if that was the wrong response.

  Sometimes I wished that Gabe would just give me a script for life or put a bug in my ear and talk me through everything.

  Tess and I both went back to what we were doing. Her pencil scratched on the page and I scrolled more and read about a tornado in a place called Campinas. I opened my internet app to figure out where that was; the app was still on Viewer from when we’d been looking at the dare-or-scare videos. I tapped the address bar, ready to switch to my search engine, when something caught my attention.

  A new video had been added to our Viewer account.

  “Tess!” I shouted. “Get in here!”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked from her bed, clearly not moving.

  “I’m serious, come here!”

  She sighed loudly, and I heard the art book thunk onto the bed. She clomped in from the other room and stopped next to me. She was wearing her pajamas and her hair was unusually messed up.

  “Look!” I said, flipping my phone around so she could see. At first I could tell she didn’t notice, because when she did, her wide eyes told me so.

  “How did that . . . ,” she whispered, grabbing my phone so she could scroll through herself.

  I thought about it for a minute.

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  “God, Frankie, I know,” Tess said, shaking her head at me. “Why do you have to—”

  “No, I just mean . . . I’m just thinking,” I said. “I just mean that she couldn’t have uploaded it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Should we watch it?”

  I took the phone back. “Of course, but, just a second,” I said, thinking furiously. “No one else had the password so . . . she would have had to have started uploading it and then—”

  “If she started the upload somewhere there wasn’t Wi-Fi,” Tess said, “then it would have finished when she got a connection again.”

  “Like if she started at the lighthouse,” I said quietly.

  “And didn’t make it back to civilization.”

  We both stared at my phone.

  “The upload date is two years ago,” I said, pointing at the screen. “She must have changed it again.”

  “I wish we knew why she kept doing that,” Tess said.

  “I told you. She did it so we wouldn’t see an alert. She probably wanted to surprise us with the videos.”

  “You never told me that,” Tess said. She didn’t sound mad, just matter-of-fact. “You told me something about Kai and Dillon and their skateboarding channel.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” I thought back, trying to remember. I know I’d connected the dots from Kai about why she’d change the dates, understanding that it meant Colette had wanted to keep the videos secret from us. And I thought I’d said that to Tess. But now I couldn’t remember doing it.

  “Did I tell you that Viewer automatically archives videos after three years?” I asked. “So our old ones aren’t gone forever . . . they’re just in the cloud or whatever.”

  “I told you that,” Tess said, shaking her head.

  Tess sat down on my bed next to me, which bothered me, but I didn’t make her get off. I figured she wouldn’t be there too long. I told myself not to say anything.

  Tess leaned closer so she could see the video. I double tapped to start it, neither of us saying anything about how she was alive in this video, and not alive now.

  “Turn on your sound,” Tess whispered. “She’s talking.”

  “It is on, there’s no sound on the videos,” I whispered back.

  Tess tsked and took the phone from me, messed with it, then handed it back. She rewound the video and hit play, and the sound of Colette’s voice startled me.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “Shhh!” Tess said, and I didn’t get mad, because I wanted to hear what Colette was saying in the video, too.

  “I want you to know that this dare is terrifying!” Colette said with a laugh. She was on the bike path, holding the camera out from her face. She wasn’t wearing a helmet. “Here goes nothing!”

  She turned the video on fast motion through her ride. Tess and I were squished together, her biting her nails loudly, me too sucked in by the video to care about Tess’s touch or nails or her being on my bed in the first place. I was scared that we’d see Colette go off the road, but instead, in an instant, the fast motion stopped, and Colette was at the lighthouse. She’d made it.

  I was letting that thought wash over me when I heard her say, “Frankie, I don’t know how you did this like it was nothing—and as a younger kid! You’re really brave, my friend.” She looked around again. “Okay, that’s it for this one.”

  The video clicked off.

  I felt Tess crying next to me, her shoulders shaking and the force of it vibrating my whole bed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have told you I found it.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said through her tears. “It’s good to see her again.” Then she asked, wiping her eyes and sniffing, “That’s it? There aren’t any more?”

  “I guess not,” I said, scrolling down the page to make sure. “No, that’s all.”

  I scooted over a little to give us both some room. Tess hugged one of my pillows. I didn’t want her to, but I didn’t say anything because I knew she probably needed the comfort. She wiped her cheeks again with her arm. She was going to get my pillow wet, I knew it. She stared into space, sniffing. I hadn’t turned on the lamp, so the room had gotten dark and it made me tired. I scooted close to the wall and leaned back on my other pillow.

  “Can I sleep in your room tonight?” she asked. I didn’t answer right away, so Tess said, “It’s okay, Frankie, I know you don’t like people in your room.”

  No, I don’t.

  But you’re different.

  But you kick!

  Also, my space is my space.

  But you’re so sad.

  And I’m sad, too.

  The sides of my brain fought for so long that Tess started to get up.

  “Wait,” I said, not wanting to be mean or insensitive. Wanting to be there for her when she needed me. Wanting to be a friend to my sister.

  “It’s okay,” Tess said again. She looked miserable. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I wanted to be someone who could say yes immediately. Who didn’t think about how weird it would be to sleep next to another person, even my sister. Other girls had sleepovers—I never did. I wanted to be the girl who had sleepovers.

  “Wait, Tess,” I said, standing up, thinking of a compromise where someone else wouldn’t be in my space—touching my st
uff. “Let’s sleep in your room.”

  epilogue

  BEFORE SCHOOL ON the first day of eighth grade, I was out on the beach, sitting on a washed-up log while Pirate chased pipers near the water.

  I took out my phone and opened Viewer. I purposely hadn’t checked it all summer because seeing Colette alive when she wasn’t anymore had felt too painful, but I’d promised myself I’d look again before school started, to remember her. School would start in minutes, so I was out of time: I had to look.

  I cranked the phone’s volume up all the way, feeling stupid that I’d thought there wasn’t sound on any of the videos—and thankful that Tess had fixed my phone. With the sound on, I watched the video of the last dare Colette ever did—the ride to the lighthouse—feeling happy when she called me brave. I watched the other videos, too, like her running through the beach grass with the thud of the hollow ground as she ran by, me imagining her jumping off the dune and wondering how far she got before she landed. And then I opened the video where she was singing at school, fast-forwarding past the talking part to the song.

  She stood at center court in the gym, singing full volume into a portable microphone she’d had forever. I’d heard her sing before and wasn’t shocked by her nice voice.

  What she sang, though, that was another story.

  Last year, about this time, a bunch of kids from school had set up a bonfire on the beach to celebrate the end of summer. Colette and Tess had forced me to go: I’d wanted to stay in and watch Tornado Ally. But they’d bribed me with marshmallows.

  Someone had brought a portable speaker and was streaming music. A dad of one of the kids was lurking off to the side in a shelter, looking at his phone. He’d started the fire and had been designated chaperone, I guess.

  When Tess, Colette, and I had arrived, we searched for sticks, then put down our blanket and started toasting marshmallows. There were probably twelve or thirteen kids there including us, Mia, Colin, Bryce, and Marcus from homeroom, who was always getting in trouble. That night, we’d all watched as he’d picked up a live crab and chased Mia with it, then gotten scolded by the lurking parent.

  Anyway, Kai had been there, too. I’d noticed him through the fire, right when the playlist changed to a song that now I’ll probably never forget in my life. You know those songs that feel like they’re controlling your emotions? It was one of those.

  “You like him, don’t you?” Colette had asked, too quietly for anyone else to hear. I’d kept my eyes on Kai, watching him laughing with Dillon about dropping a marshmallow in the sand, daring him to eat it. “Frankie, you do, right?”

  I hadn’t said anything at first. But something about the song and the warm summer night and the ocean next to me and the stars overhead had made me someone else for a second—someone who could easily identify her emotions.

  “Maybe,” I’d whispered to Colette. She was the only person I’d ever come close to admitting that to, and that maybe had been a big deal to me.

  I guess Colette had known it was a big deal, too.

  I rewound to the beginning to hear Colette talk.

  “Frankie, I have something to say, okay?” She backed away from where she’d propped the phone, stumbling a little on the freshly polished gym floor.

  “I’m going to do the dare in a second, but first, I know you’re mad at me.” Colette looked down at her scuffed white sneakers—I’d been right about those, too. “I’m pretty sure I know why, and I feel really bad about it.” She looked up again, her face concerned. “I hope that when you watch these videos of our old dares, you’ll see that I’m sorry. It was the best thing I could think to do for you, so you’d know how much I miss our friendship. This weird game you made up was one of my favorite things we ever did together. And I hope seeing it again will make you want to be friends again, because I’m moving soon, and I won’t be able to stand it if you’re still mad at me.”

  She looked at the floor and sniffed, then took a deep breath. She tugged down the hem of her T-shirt, tossed her bright red hair over her shoulder, and cleared her throat. She looked around, probably to make sure she was alone.

  “Okay, Frankie, this song is for you.”

  And then she sang my song for Kai.

  Even though it was Colette singing and not the real band, it made me feel squishy in the same way that I had last year. And watching Colette sing like she was on a reality show after sneaking into our school, watching her go full-out, I felt braver about school starting. I felt braver about everything. I felt inspired by her.

  I wiped away the salty tears that had finally come in their own time, just like Gabe had said they would. I threw the stick Pirate had just dropped at my feet, then I texted Kai.

  FRANKIE

  Hi

  His reply came back quickly.

  KAI

  Sup!

  How was ur summer?

  Mostly good

  Are you excited for school???

  I’m excited to not be at the retirement village anymore

  So many old people

  I mean they’re cool but

  My Gpops made me play cards every single day

  LOL

  So, I was wondering . . .

  ???

  Um . . . ur typing a long time

  K now I’m nervous

  Frankie?

  I might have to call you Frances to get your attention . . .

  Back!

  Pirate wanted me to throw her stick

  NEVER CALL ME FRANCES

  LOL, got it

  So . . . what’s the ???

  I took a deep breath.

  I was just going to ask . . .

  Wanna do a dare with me sometime?

  It took almost no time at all for him to reply.

  YES.

  Today

  ?

  My belly and cheeks both felt warm, and I was glad that I was the only person on the beach and that dogs don’t care if you’re embarrassed.

  Meet later at the frying pan after school . . . 4?

  K!!

  I sent him a thumbs-up emoji, then he sent a smile emoji back, then even though I wanted to send him fifty more, I put my phone away, thinking Gabe would be proud of me for stopping the conversation.

  I didn’t know this then since I’m not psychic, but later, Kai would ask me to hold his hand—and I would for a whole minute without freaking out about touching another person, because Kai isn’t just any other person. He’s Kai. And holding his hand would feel awkward but nice, and less disgusting than I would have imagined.

  The reason I could do that is because of change. Change used to be my enemy because I’d thought it was always bad. For sure, there’d been a lot of bad change that’d happened lately. But there’d been a little bit of good change, too: change in me. Sitting on the log, smiling about Kai like my cheeks were going to break, I felt mostly ready to start eighth grade. I felt older. I felt less alone. I felt okay.

  And I felt okay that I didn’t feel okay about Colette.

  I used to try to just deal with things and move on. It’s not worth it to think about sad things, like getting teased by kids you don’t know. (It’s harder when you’re being made fun of by kids you do know.) But I used to try to just handle a situation and then forget it if I could. I’m sure Gabe would tell me an official therapy word for that if I asked him.

  But Colette . . . Her death was a sad thing I couldn’t move on from easily. I didn’t know how long losing her would feel like a boulder on my chest—maybe forever. But the thing that made it the tiniest bit better was that now I knew that I hadn’t ever really lost her friendship. That made it okay for me to feel not okay—for as long as I needed to.

  “I miss you,” I said to Colette
, hoping the ocean wind would carry my message off to her, wherever she was. I waited a little bit, to see if a message came back. None did, but I still felt like maybe she’d heard me.

  I stood up and stretched, ready to go back to the inn to get my backpack for school. Before I called for Pirate, before I started whatever was coming next, I waited just a few seconds longer still. Something felt different about my body: something felt better.

  I looked down at my hands and realized that, without knowing it, I’d flipped them over, so the backs of my hands were against my jeans.

  Facing the ocean, on the beach where we’d spent so much of our time together, feeling both okay and not okay, I stood as my friend Colette had told me to.

  I stood with my palms up.

  Author’s Note

  NEURODIVERGENT IS A newish term for people living with developmental disabilities such as dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette’s syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and for those on the autism spectrum. I hadn’t heard of or used the word until I wrote Tornado Brain, despite knowing and loving several people who fall into this category. Instead, I describe them using positive terms like bright, creative, hilarious, curious, and inventive.

  That’s not always how they describe themselves, though, because living with a developmental disability can make people feel the opposite of bright, inventive, or curious. They can feel stupid, different, weird in a bad way, and disconnected. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in six of the 74.2 million children in the United States have a developmental disability, so they’re not alone—but it doesn’t mean they don’t feel that way.