by Amy Braun
I guess it didn’t really matter. People were getting help, and that was the important thing. The SPU was very good at corralling volunteers and organizing aid. Climatologists and meteorologists had predicted that this would be the year of the Centennial almost a decade ago, and the SPU had been training ever since. Everyone knew the gravity of the situation, and had prepared as best as they could.
My eyes skittered forward, and I knew that all the preparation hadn’t been enough.
By the front entrance of the tent city was a series massive wooden boards. Every inch of them was covered in papers and photographs. The Missing Boards.
Survivors huddled in front of the boards, stapling new photographs or sketches of loved ones to the wood, or holding each other for comfort. Quiet sobs and unending tears streaked their faces. My heart ached, and I wondered if I should stop at the boards. If I looked through all those photos, would I see my family’s smiling faces with the ominous words “MISSING” stamped over their heads? Would I see my face? If I’d woken up this far from home, who was to say that my parents hadn’t? That James hadn’t gotten lost, too?
Just because the Centennial was over and the skies ahead were clear, didn’t mean that the dangers had passed.
I steeled myself and kept marching. I told myself that my family wasn’t on those boards. They’d made it into the basement and probably wouldn’t have been able to get out yet.
Oh, God, I hoped Dad remembered to punch the panic button for the SPU. I knew they had enough food and supplies to last them for three months, but I didn’t want them to be trapped underground for so long.
When we learned about the Centennial, the government made it mandatory that every building have an accessible storm shelter. They worked with the SPU to have emergency alarms installed. Once the panic button was pressed, it would send a satellite signal to the nearest emergency or SPU station. Unfortunately, since millions of people would be pressing those buttons and the number of volunteers and civil workers was so small, a waiting list was formed. The date and time the panic buttons were pressed was recorded underground with the wealthy and the Lottery winners. Whoever pressed the button first would be helped first. Rescue workers then had to go down the list. It would take days, weeks, possibly months before everyone was rescued from their basements and shelters. For those who had faulty wiring with their panic buttons would wait the longest, until the largest, final search begun and the state could be searched grid by grid.
Dad was an electrician, so I wasn’t worried about the wiring. Mom was a nurse, so she would know what to do about waste and would ensure that James would have enough inhalers. But how long would it take for them to be rescued? I didn’t know if Mom pressed the panic button when she took James into the basement, or if Dad had done it when I told him to go inside.
Did they think I was dead? Were they okay? Had the floorboards been able to support the weight of the water rushing into the house? What if–
“Ava!”
I jumped near out of my skin when I heard my name. I spun around and looked at the truck cruising down the highway. I had been so lost in thought that I hadn’t even heard the damn thing.
I shuffled to the side of the road and peered in the back of the truck, which was packed with survivors. A slim brown hand waved desperately at me from the back.
Tears pricked my eyes when I saw my best friend, Piper.
She shouted for the driver to stop. When he did, she leaped out of the back and ran for me. We collided, and the tears spilled over.
“Oh my God,” my voice shook as I crushed her into a hug. “Thank God you’re okay!”
“You too,” she cried.
She sniffled against my shoulder before pulling back and looking at me.
Piper was gorgeous. No, gorgeous is the wrong word. Ethereal is better. Even soaked and dirty like I was, she looked like a goddess with flawless, bronze skin, velvet black hair, big sepia eyes, a wide smile, perfect body, and mile long legs. Piper had three different modeling contracts and was working on becoming a spokeswoman for a new make-up brand. She was as wealthy as she was beautiful, living with her investor parents in one of the million dollar houses on Ocean Boulevard. She had academic, volunteer, and basketball scholarships that would pay for almost all of her tuition to the University of Florida. Piper was the kind of girl that made pale, skinny redheads like me feel self-conscious and insecure.
Instead, I loved Piper. She was the sister I never had, and she never made me feel bad about myself.
“I didn’t even know you were in West Palm,” she said.
“I wasn’t,” I blurted.
Piper’s eyes widened. Did she look nervous? “What do you mean?”
Before I could explain what happened, or ask why she was in West Palm herself, another voice interrupted us.
“Either get in the truck or get out of the way!”
My eyes moved over Piper’s shoulder to the guy who’d growled at us. My heart sank, and I cursed my luck. I’d been so happy and relieved to see Piper that I didn’t think I would also cross paths with the boy I hated.
Declan Garner was a walking stereotype. I honestly think he went out of his way to be just like the bullying jocks that are often exaggerated in movies. He was the star quarterback at our college, a self-proclaimed beer pong champion, and an absolute jerk. So of course, he was also ridiculously handsome.
With thick muscles, well-styled dark blond hair, calculating brown eyes, and a cold smile, Declan seemed disarming and friendly at first. Dozens of girls at our school had crushes on him.
But underneath the charm and lies he spewed, he was a thug. When no one was looking, he would grab the quiet kids or the loners and trick them into thinking they belonged, only to humiliate them later. Whether through embarrassing pranks or pointed fingers, Declan made sure everyone knew he was above them. His favorite thing to do was start fights after school when he knew none of the teachers would be able to do anything. The only injury I would ever see on Declan was bruised knuckles.
Rumors circled that he was having a difficult time at home, that his low grades, struggling athletic career, and alienation from his parents was going to get him kicked out of his house, but I wasn’t about to ask him if things were okay. It might make him tear my head off.
“Make up your mind, Ginger!” he shouted at me.
Piper threw him an angry glare, but didn’t say anything. We had both seen how volatile his temper could be on the football field. Even though he was quarterback, he would go out of his way to mow down anyone in his path. I’d seen him stomp on more than one unfortunate team member because he couldn’t be bothered to go around them when they fell.
Piper slid her hand into mine and led me toward the truck. “The driver is one of my agent’s cousins. Everybody in here is going back to Lantana,” she informed. “I’ll tell him to drop you off at your house.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
While Piper went to talk to the driver, I climbed in the back of the truck and sat as far from Declan as I could. There were five other people packed in the truck bed and all of them were squished together on one side. I huddled in the corner, wishing Declan weren’t so big, and wondering what I could bribe Piper with so I didn’t have to sit next to him.
“Can’t believe you made it,” Declan grumbled, eyeing me. “Never pegged you as a survivor.”
I looked at my hands and rubbed them together. The sun was out and high in the azure sky, but I couldn’t get warm.
“You always seemed like the type that would be the first to go,” he went on. “You must have been close to an SPU station. No way you would have been able to defend yourself.”
I knew what he was doing. He needed to assert his caveman status by bragging about how he saved himself and a bunch of other people. He wanted to act like the Centennial hadn’t probably made him pee his pants. Picking on me and provoking me was a good way of doing it.
Didn’t help that he was right. I hadn’t saved myself. I h
adn’t really saved anybody. I was caught in the flood, shoved onto concrete, faced with a Stormkind, and then–
I wrapped my hands around my stomach and hunched over.
“Jesus, Ginger, you better not puke,” he warned.
“Leave her alone, Declan.”
I looked at Piper like she was my lifeline. Guess that was appropriate, since she was making sure I got home.
She pulled herself into the truck bed and glared at Mr. Jackass Jock. An old flare of jealously filled my stomach. Piper was always so composed and confident and strong. She thought I was joking whenever I told her that she could run for president and win.
I always told her that with a straight face.
“Whatever,” growled Declan. He stretched out against the side of the truck as it started moving along the highway. He draped his arm over the top, causing his fingers to brush against my shoulder. His feet pushed against the two people across from him. They didn’t meet his eyes and huddled closer together.
“You okay?” Piper asked me quietly.
I realized my hands were still on my stomach, as if I really did look ready to hurl.
“I just…” My chest was tight when I breathed. “I can’t believe it. All that happened…”
“Yeah,” she whispered, shuffling closer to me. “They did so much to prepare us, but it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.”
We sat in silence for what was only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Even Declan kept his mouth shut. Looked like miracles could still happen, after all.
“Where were you?” I asked tentatively, desperate for something to talk about. I wanted to know, and it wasn’t the appropriate time to ask her what her plans for the weekend were.
“I had a photo shoot on the beach,” complained Piper. She scoffed and shook her head. “Stupid hotshot photographer wouldn’t reschedule. He said it had to be today and we wouldn’t stay on the beach for long.” Her shoulders tensed beside mine. “I saw the whole thing forming so fast, I didn’t think I was going to make it. I don’t even remember how I got into the city. I got tangled in a wave and passed out.” Piper’s eyes went dark with what I imagined were harrowing memories. Then she looked at me and smiled. “At least I managed to get my clothes back on. Could you imagine me running around looking for help in a bikini?”
“I can.”
We both scowled at Declan. He didn’t notice; his eyes were glued on Piper’s chest. She folded her arms over her breasts, her long blue tank top covering her curves. His eyes went to her cut off shorts and bare legs instead.
“Stop looking at me,” she warned.
“Can’t help it.” Declan lifted his eyes slowly and grinned. “You’ve always looked like an Egyptian goddess.”
I guess the look he gave her was what could have been called “bedroom eyes,” but I wouldn’t know. No one had ever looked at me with anything resembling interest. I was passed over because I was shy and not well endowed. At times like this, it was a blessing. Other times, it just made me feel lonely.
Piper narrowed her eyes. “I’m Puerto Rican.”
His grin widened and he shrugged a shoulder. “Same difference.”
Wow. Guess he wasn’t as smart as I thought.
Ignoring him, Piper turned her eyes back to me. “What about you? Why were you in West Palm? You should have texted me.”
Chills wracked my body again. I dragged my knees closer to my chest. I barely noticed the truck stopping. We must have arrived at someone’s house. One of the men across from us scrambled to his feet and began exiting the truck bed.
“I wasn’t in West Palm,” I muttered quietly.
“What?”
I could feel my heart shuddering through my chest. I tightened my grip on my arms and breathed steadily.
“I was at home. In Lantana.” Pressure built behind my ribcage, and words began to spill from my lips. “Dad and I were barricading the house. He hurt himself and the front door slammed open. The house started flooding, so I told him to get into the basement with Mom and James, and I…” My eyes stung. “I couldn’t get back in the basement so I went outside–”
Piper gasped. “Oh, God, Ava…”
Declan snorted.
My eyes began to burn. “I was trying to get to Park Vista to the SPU station, but I got caught in the flood, and… and…” I whirled to face my best friend. Her eyes were as wide and horrified as mine must have been.
“I saw one, Piper.”
She stared at me, not sure what I meant, and seemingly afraid to ask.
“I saw a Stormkind.”
Piper’s eyes bulged, her pretty mouth becoming a shocked “O.”
“Bullshit you did,” growled Declan. The truck had stopped again, more survivors getting out. “Nobody’s ever seen them. All that historical account crap they make us read in school? None of it proves anything. Actual scientists have proved that the Centennial is just a freak occurrence.”
“What about those photographs and films they show us? The ones that soldiers from the war recorded when they saw them land on the battlefield in the middle of a storm?”
I remembered what she was talking about, the grainy black and white images of WWI soldiers shooting and running across the battlefield, a flash of light smashing into the earth.
A figure rising from the dirt, scrambling left and right and chasing the already terrified soldiers, hurling winds, ice, water, and dirt at the men. The massive storms that made the Great War even more grueling.
There were critics who accused the videos and films of being hoaxes, tricks of the light and illusions created by the sheer terror from that war, but other historians spent their whole lives digging into history and finding old journals or ancient sketches that detailed accounts of great storms happening every hundred years. The most reliable evidence came from the WWI accounts, when millions and millions of men and women had been writing about the atrocious things they’d seen. Finding fifty thousand accounts that mentioned strange beings falling from earth and controlling the weather was hard to ignore.
It was up for debate whether or not the SPU believed the historians and their feverent displays of evidence. But after a collective of meteorologists looked up records of the massive storms and theorized what would happen if another storm like the Centennial happened in our lifetime, they formed the Storm Protection Union and began to prepare. The years had changed, but the paranoia remained the same.
Though some people just wouldn’t bend to the possibility of the supernatural.
“Right,” Declan scoffed. “Because you can really rely on the story of a terrified fifteen year old soldier in World War One. They won’t have massive PSTD or delusions or anything.”
Something snapped in me. I whirled and shouted at Declan, forgetting that he was twice my size and liked to break things.
“I saw it! I saw it, and then–”
Piper’s hands gripped my arms. “Ava, calm down. It’s okay.”
My best friend tugged me away from Declan and wrapped her arms around me. One of us was shaking, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I wouldn’t have admitted it any more than she would have.
Declan narrowed his eyes and glowered, but I was too rattled to say anything else. All I could do was see a skeleton of light surrounded by a featureless, liquid face, its very presence reminding me of how small and simple I was, how easy it had absorbed the life of my neighbor, and then the man, the man with the dagger, and the pain–
The truck jolted to a stop. Piper and I bounced in the truck bed. I blinked rapidly, remembering where I was, and where I was headed.
Home. I was finally going home.
I pinched my eyes shut and forced out another breath. I really did not like these panic attacks.
The truck started again, and Piper’s arms were still tight around me. She was whispering something in my ear, but my brain refused to process her voice into coherent words.
For whatever reason, when I opened my eyes, they went straight to Dec
lan.
I don’t know what I expected when I looked at him. Maybe the usual disdain and indifference.
I didn’t anticipate the confusion. Or the unease. Declan was looking at me like I was an animal he wasn’t sure I should approach.
He looked at me like I was dangerous.
The expression was gone so quickly from his face that I was sure I’d imagined it. I must have. Declan wouldn’t be afraid of a nobody like me. I was just another player on his field, ready for him to stomp on.
The truck pulled to a new stop and he looked over the side.
“Well, this is my stop, ladies. One of the docs said I took a good hit to the head and need to get it checked out.” He rolled his eyes, and I suppressed the urge to tell him there was no need to check his head– there was nothing decent inside of it. He looked at Piper. “Hottie, I hope I’ll see you around. Ginger…” Declan’s eyes flicked up and down my body, lingering too long on my skinny legs and insubstantial chest. “Well, I won’t be looking for you.”
Declan sneered at us and leaped over the side of the truck.
“God, he’s such an asshole,” Piper grumbled. She released me from her hold. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ava?”
I hesitated for a split second, only one more memory threatening to resurface. I turned to my best friend and smiled weakly. “Yeah. I’m good. It’s just… It was just scary, you know?”
Piper’s face twisted into a grimace, and she still looked beautiful. Not fair.
“Scary’s not the word I would use,” she remarked. “Pant-shittingly terrifying is better.”
I gaped dramatically. “You swore! You never swear!”
She held up a delicate finger. “First of all, you’re the one that never swears aloud, and second,” she lowered her hand, unease filling her eyes, “you have to admit it fits the situation.”
No argument there. I couldn’t imagine what she went through. I mean, blacking out in the middle of a hurricane? She was lucky to be alive. I wanted to tell her about… the other part of my little adventure, but Piper was going to have her own nightmares now.
Besides, I didn’t want to think about my last conscious moments in the hurricane. I wasn’t ready. Right now, I just needed to get home.
