Then Blair looked at Walter Letzmann. A man who didn’t know for sure if his wife was okay. A man who was going through the scariest experience of his life, surrounded by a bunch of strangers.
Strangers who were explaining the difference between black doom and sludge metal.
Blair took a deep breath. “Hey, Mom. Dave’s napping right now. We’ll see you soon, though. We all love you.”
***
Blair spent the next hour tracking the weather on her phone. At the hospital while David got stitches. On the ride from the hospital to their mom’s house. And in the living room of that house, while everyone else talked.
Their dad had called, and their mom put him on speakerphone while Logan gave everyone a play-by-play of the morning’s events. “. . . And then Blair just straight-up dived into the other lane and cut them off. Like, I’ve never seen a turn that fast. Except in movies. It was so freaking cool. And then they let us all get in their tornado-mobile . . .”
Their dad’s voice crackled through the phone. “Blair, honey, I’m so proud of you. You’ve been incredibly brave.” At the same time, their mom walked over to give Blair a hug.
“I mean, I couldn’t have done it all by myself,” Blair pointed out. It felt odd to be treated like the hero of the whole strange experience. Especially when she had the feeling that this ordeal wasn’t over yet.
After the call with their dad ended, the living room got quieter. Rain drummed on the roof. Blair could hear the wind wrapping around the house, searching for a way in.
Staring at radar images on her phone was making Blair feel woozy. She wished her mom or Theo would turn on the TV or the radio. But both of them were just getting on with their day. Theo was in the kitchen baking. Blair’s mom sat on the couch writing wedding thank-you notes. Just a typical Sunday for them, tree-bending winds included.
“Shouldn’t we be in the storm shelter?” Blair asked her mom.
Her mom shrugged. “We’ll head there if something actually touches down near us, but it’ll be pretty cramped with five of us. No point scrunching in there unless we have to.”
This happens all the time here, Blair reminded herself. She forced herself to put her phone down. Theo was telling David about the time he almost cut his whole finger off and needed a million stitches. Blair noticed that David was listening politely, not looking too broody. She chewed on a piece of banana bread that Theo had made. The tension in her shoulders started to fade.
And then the siren sounded.
That long, high-pitched wail meant only one thing. “Okay, everybody,” said Theo calmly. “Time to get in the shelter. Follow me out to the backyard.”
Nobody panicked. Nobody ran. They all moved quietly to the back door.
The panic set in when they stepped outside.
“It’s right on top of us!” yelled Theo.
Thanks, Theo, thought Blair in some non-terrified corner of her mind. Really helpful.
The tornado was crashing through houses three blocks away. Fragments of houses spurted into the air.
Nobody needed to be told to run.
They ran in an awkward clump. Theo clung to Blair’s mom, who had one arm around her new husband and held Logan’s hand with the other. Blair held on to Logan, with David bringing up the rear. Blair was sandwiched between brothers, trying not to trip them.
The wind no longer sounded like wind. It was just a deep, earth-shaking roar. Not like a train or a jet engine—not like anything Blair had ever heard.
Blair’s mom pulled open the hatch to the storm shelter. She pushed Theo in ahead of her and then pulled Logan after her.
Blair was on the top step of the shelter when a wooden beam flew toward them. The tornado had blown it from another yard, another house. Blair ducked as it hurtled through the air.
It hit David instead of her.
She whipped around just in time to see him sprawl backward. He landed hard on the wet ground, pinned under the slab of wood.
“Dave!” Blair screamed. She felt like she was running in slow motion. Partly because the wind was pulling at her so powerfully. She had to fight for every step. When she reached David, he was already trying to sit up.
She didn’t think about whether the wooden beam was heavy. She just shoved it off him. Then she grabbed him under the arms and hauled him up. Together they staggered back to the storm shelter’s entrance. The door stood upright, wavering from the impact of the wind.
David would’ve stopped her if he’d been strong enough, if he hadn’t been dazed and injured. He would’ve made sure she got into the shelter first. She knew that. He’d spent her whole life protecting her. He was the one who’d taught her how to be brave in the first place.
She pushed her brother through the entrance. And when the door blew shut behind him, she let it close. She knew she couldn’t fight that wind. But she gripped the handle with both hands, hoping to anchor herself.
The next thing she knew, she was airborne.
10
The wind lifted Blair as if she weighed nothing, tearing her hands away from the door handle. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.
Cover your head . . . But she couldn’t control her arms. Her whole body flailed wildly, gripped by different strands of the wind. She was hurtling through space, too fast for her brain to keep up.
I’m going to die, she realized. J.J. had said she was smart. Her dad had called her brave. She’d held on to that door with every ounce of strength she had. And she’d still gotten sucked into this tornado. She was still going to die. Because this wasn’t about being smart or brave or strong. It was about being lucky or unlucky.
Suddenly she was plummeting. The next thing she knew, her whole left side slammed into something incredibly hard. The ground.
She screamed from the pain. Curled up into a ball. Realized that she could control her limbs again, that the wind wasn’t fighting her.
The wind, in fact, was gone.
Everything was dead still. Blair looked up. Above her, she saw the tornado. Lifting silently off the ground as if it weighed nothing. As if it wasn’t carrying houses and cars in its air currents. It was just winding itself back up into the sky. Directly overhead, Blair could see straight up into the tornado—straight into the eye that Sam had talked about.
She saw sleek spinning walls of wind. Flickers of lightning darting out from the walls. Little baby funnels, twisting horizontally, delicate as pieces of string.
Blair couldn’t breathe. But she stared up into the eye of the tornado until the clouds closed over it.
She sat up—slowly, because it hurt. The tornado was gone. The air was motionless. Somewhere far away, she heard her family calling her name.
“Blair! Oh my g—Blair!”
That was when it hit her. I’m alive.
Awesome.
***
Blair ached all over. Her left wrist felt as if someone was hitting it repeatedly with a hammer. Probably broken—sprained at the very least. But she could walk. She could see. She wasn’t bleeding. Well, not seriously.
Absolutely everyone had hugged her. Her mom was sobbing with relief. Even Logan was crying. David gripped her by the shoulders and said she was out of her mind, and amazing, and out of her freaking mind.
Blair couldn’t help noticing the damage, though. Her mom’s house was pretty much fine, but all through the neighborhood, buildings were flattened. The tornado had chewed them up and spit them out. Piles and piles of wreckage stretched in a crooked line all the way to the edge of town.
And already, people were searching for survivors. Citizens of Hatchville waded through the rubble. Some called out names. Others just yelled, “Does anyone need help?” Nobody was just sitting around waiting for ambulances to show up.
Blair stood up slowly. No dizziness: good. And her feet held her weight. She should probably get checked out for a concussion, just to be safe. Not to mention sprained or broken bones. But there was plenty of time for that. According to her phone—still
in her pocket, still working—it wasn’t even noon yet. She still had the whole day ahead of her.
***
It was a long day. Hours of going from house to house, helping to pull people out. Not everyone had made it. Blair suspected she would cry at some point. But by the time she had a chance to just sit and think and feel, she was exhausted. Too exhausted to think or feel. Which just left sitting.
Incredibly, she herself wasn’t badly hurt. Just a sprained wrist and the promise of a monstrous bruise on the whole left side of her body. David was basically all right too. The impact of the wooden beam had mashed up his right shoulder. So by now, his right arm could audition for a zombie movie. But all the important pieces were intact.
David sat down next to her in their mom’s kitchen. Everyone else was in the living room.
“I wonder if Sam and J.J. and Ron got to see this one,” said Blair.
“Probably,” said David dryly. “They seemed to be on a roll today.” He paused. “I know you think I was rude to them.”
“No. I think we were all scared and upset. And they were kind of insane. I understand why you didn’t, like, bond with them.”
David closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “That Sam guy. This is going to sound weird, but he reminded me of Mom.”
“Um . . . okay. I admit I didn’t see a resemblance.”
“You know the way Mom jumps into new things. The way she gets excited about what’s next—about what it means for her. And how she never thinks about the consequences.”
“I—don’t actually know if that’s true, Dave,” Blair said quietly. “That’s how it seemed to us, after she left. But—we didn’t know what was going on in her head. And I don’t think she ever forgot we existed. I think she’s always cared.”
David propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know.”
“You could try talking to her about it. We could all try having more honest talks, once in a while.”
“That’s fair,” he sighed. “But my point is, that’s why I was so tense with the chasers. It was like, these people take risks for fun, when everyone else needs help just staying alive. And at the same time, I felt . . .” He swallowed, dropped his arms, and straightened up. “I mean, there we were, depending on them. Because I messed up. I couldn’t get us out of that situation.”
“Dave—”
“After Mom left us, I had one goal. To always be there for my family. To keep you safe and never let you down.”
Blair swallowed. “You’ve never let us down, Dave.”
“But today—”
“No, not even today. You’re not letting anyone down.” She squeezed his good arm. “You can’t protect us from everything. That’s not your job. Not as a brother, not as a replacement parent. That’s not something anybody could do.”
He let out a laugh that was at least fifty percent sob. “I guess you don’t need me taking care of you, anyway. You took charge when I lost my grip. You’re the reason we survived.”
“Yeah,” said Logan, entering the kitchen. “We totally don’t need you around anymore, Dave. I’m calling the factory and sending you back.”
This time David’s laugh was steadier.
Logan grabbed a piece of banana bread. “Hey, I found Sam’s storm chaser web series. I’m watching it online right now. It’s epic.”
He left again. Blair snorted, “Guess he’s not traumatized.”
David shook his head. “Seriously, though, I couldn’t stand those guys. Storms like this—they’re not a game. They don’t exist to give people excitement. They destroy people’s lives.”
“I think most chasers get that. I think most of them really want to help save lives. They’re not just in it for the thrill. Even Sam’s crew.”
He nodded slowly. “What about you?”
She stared at him. “What about me?”
“I can tell it’s interesting to you. The way tornadoes work. The idea of staying one step ahead of them.”
Blair popped a piece of banana bread into her mouth and chewed for a minute. “I don’t know. Part of me did enjoy it, maybe. But a bigger part of me was just glad to make it out alive—glad that we’re all okay. I’ve never been that scared in my life. I’d be fine with never being that scared again.”
David put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him, feeling all the bruises and scars on her body. Finally, for just a moment, she closed her eyes.
The image of the tornado’s core danced behind her eyelids. Still terrifying and beautiful—half nightmare, half miracle.
About the Author
Vanessa Acton is a writer and editor based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enjoys stalking dead people (also known as historical research), drinking too much tea, and taking long walks during her home state's annual three-week thaw.
Vortex Page 5
