Hurricane Kiss

by Deborah Blumenthal

  JILLIAN

  My insides tighten as I watch River checking the time on his phone. What if he does get out and start to run? Should I go with him? Or stay? Will Harlan even let him go? What can he do to stop him?

  No one expected a traffic jam like this. If my mom had, would she have let me go? She must have picked up my vibes because my phone rings.

  “How are you doing?”

  “We’re gridlocked.”

  “How’s Harlan doing?”

  Freaking out only he can’t show us that he is. “OK … I guess.”

  “I heard that the tie-up is close to Austin,” she says. “But they’re going to open up more contraflow lanes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re going to turn more traffic lanes that usually go into Houston into lanes going out. That should help.”

  “But the storm … isn’t it going to hit us sooner?”

  She hesitates. “Maybe.” She’s working on acting calm, but I know my mom.

  “River wants to bail,” I whisper, even though I know he can hear me.

  “What?”

  “Hide out somewhere. He doesn’t think we’re going to make it to Austin.”

  “Hide out?” she says, her voice rising. “You’re in the middle of 290.”

  “Not here on the highway, back in Houston.”

  “What’s he going to do, go running back?” she says, not waiting for an answer. “When it hits there will be downed power lines, trees falling, flooding, wind gusts.” I hear panic in her voice. “Jillian, you can’t be outside. You have no idea what it’s like to be in a hurricane. Running back on foot is crazy. Didn’t Harlan tell him that?”

  “But suffocating in the car is OK?” I don’t know which one of us is crazier, or what makes sense or doesn’t or if it makes any difference at all. This is pick-your-poison time.

  It reminds me of the “would you rather” games we used to play when we had sleepovers. That seems like a lifetime ago, when Sari, Kelly, and I had our Friday night pajama parties. When we were tucked into our safe little beds, we enjoyed scaring ourselves by imagining all the horrible scenarios we might face and then asking ourselves which one was worse and how we’d choose to die.

  Would you rather die in an airplane crash or a car crash?

  Would you rather get chewed to death by a mountain lion or bitten by a black widow spider?

  Never did I imagine that one day in the real world I’d be asking myself, Would you rather die from a hurricane in a car on the freeway or outside running for shelter?

  River turns, x-raying my head. What does he hope to find out? I feel like the fly on the wall, listening to myself as if I’m hearing a stranger. Am I agreeing with him? I’m not sure when that happened.

  “Stay with Harlan,” she says in an exaggeratedly calm voice, like she’s talking to an idiot. “I have to speak to New York, but call me back and give me an update.”

  She wants to hang up so she can talk to the office, a friend, anyone. She’s out of arguments and needs to regroup. She’s probably frantically checking on the traffic to see if we’re doomed either way.

  Harlan’s eyes meet mine briefly in the mirror. He doesn’t know me at all. Am I like his son? He needs an ally here. He can’t think of any arguments to keep us where we are though. Even if he agreed with River, what would he do, make a U-turn and fast track it back to Houston? Ditch his car and try to make it somewhere on foot? I’ve never seen him running, like some of the neighbors. I’ve never seen him anywhere except behind the wheel, or in his yard with a drink in his hand.

  River springs into action, stuffing things into his backpack—water, power bars, beef jerky, bug spray—then his socks and running shoes.

  “What are you doing?” Harlan says.

  “What does it look like?”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  River ignores him, turning to me. “You wearing socks and running shoes?”

  I nod.

  “Take water, whatever food you have.”

  I sit there, unable to move.

  “Jillian,” he says, like a warning.

  Harlan runs a hand through his hair. “River …” He’s losing it.

  “This is your last chance to turn around,” River says. He looks at his dad levelly. “We can make it back to Houston in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m not turning around. I’m not going back.”

  River flings open the car door. “Let’s go, Jillian!”

  I freeze.

  River climbs out of the front seat. Harlan watches me through the rearview mirror.

  “Good girl.”

  Good? More like lame. Zombie. All I’m capable of is not deciding, my life on hold. Thanks, Mom, for telling me to think for myself, but always making decisions for me.

  But right now being with Harlan feels safer than leaving, so as usual, I do nothing.

  River leans against the car and pulls on socks and ties his running shoes. He looks back at me searchingly as he slips his arms through the straps of his backpack. I’m out of time.

  Decide. Decide. Decide.

  I grab the plastic handle over the door and squeeze so hard it should splinter in my sweaty hand.

  “Stay where you are.” My mom’s words echo in my head. She’ll be furious if I go. I stare back at River. He shakes his head, giving up on me, and breaks into a run.

  Something explodes inside me when he leaves, my whole body vibrating inside, like I’m in overdrive. Am I panicking for him running off on his own, or me staying behind? Is he wrong to go? Am I wrong to stay? I’ve never had to make a decision like this. There’s no one to call, no search engine with answers to help me make a decision that could kill me or keep me alive. What do I do? Where do I go for help?

  I sit still. The car doesn’t move. Time is suspended. We are locked in the middle of a major highway with nothing around us except shuttered commercial buildings and now-vacant warehouses on empty streets. How safe is it to be stuck in a car? High winds can shatter glass and even lift the SUV and send it flying. There are giant road signs. What if the wind tears them down and sends them soaring like missiles across the freeway, slicing us up like giant blades? Do we just sit still and wait to be hit?

  I think of the pictures in the Houston Science Museum of the figures in ancient Pompeii covered in volcanic ash. What would it feel like to be buried alive? One second your everyday life was in motion, everyone around you was alive, and things happened as usual. A nanosecond later, without warning, Mount Vesuvius erupted and the world turned into a diorama of the dead, buried underneath a shroud of volcanic ash.

  My whole body is pumping out sweat, and it’s not just the heat in the car. I try to breathe deeply, to take myself to a calmer place, but I can’t. I can’t. I feel like I have a blown-up heart pounding in my chest. My head is foggy, blood rushing in my ears.

  I stare at Harlan through the mirror. I thought he’d get out of the car to see which way River ran, but he didn’t. He sits there defiant, staring ahead, neck muscles taut. Doesn’t he care? “Do you want to move up front?”

  His voice startles me. “Sure.” I open the back door and get out to study the unending panorama of cars in rows, everything still, like we’re all frozen in time. I get into the front seat and slam the door. Harlan nods his head in approval.

  The weather isn’t holding still. The air is thick and heavy as if the rain above us is enclosed in a massive swollen cloud, waiting for a preordained moment to burst and come cascading down.

  “Do you want a snack or something to drink?” he asks.

  “No … thanks.”

  I look down at my hands. They’re trembling. Does he see? He doesn’t seem to.

  “It’ll start moving,” he says, stiffly.

  I don’t answer.

  From
somewhere inside, I hear myself say, “I … I can’t stay.”

  “What?”

  In the distance, I can still see River running. “I can’t stay. I think he’s right. We’re going to die if we stay here. It’s wrong. It’s a mistake.”

  He sits there, not answering.

  “You should turn around, go back. There’s still time.” I wait for him to answer, but he doesn’t. He just shakes his head back and forth, staring in front of him.

  I tie my running shoes and then pull out my phone and text River, pushing the car door open.

  “Wait!”

  PART 2

  Chapter 12

  12 HOURS TO LANDFALL

  RIVER

  No time to talk. We run, hydrate, and keep running, running, and running, stopping to dig pebbles and dirt out of our shoes, then running more, back toward Houston, the way we came. We’re next to each other, but on our own, like strangers in a race. I’ve done miles, marathons before, so I’m used to this. But she isn’t. She’s winded, struggling. I watch her from the corner of my eye. Sympathy isn’t going to help. I look away thinking about everything else.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can keep …”

  Shut up and keep going. I stay silent.

  “You’re used to running in the heat, you’re in good condition …”

  After I came back, I started running again. Every day, any weather, in spite of it. Heat, rain, steam-room humidity, my fuck-you fitness regimen, jumping hurdles, the ones in front of me for the rest of my life. I couldn’t change my head, but I could change my body, build hardness, and toughen my heart. I’d become somebody else. Peak fitness or die.

  “I have to stop,” she says, nearly gasping for breath.

  I don’t hear her, I’m deaf. I won’t play to that. Suck it up.

  “River … River!” She grabs my arm and shakes me.

  I glance up at the darkening sky. “Two minutes.”

  We’re on a side street parallel to the highway going against the traffic in an industrial part of town where no one would choose to be. A body shop off to the left, a taqueria, a McDonald’s. Warehouses with their protective steel doors down, the outsides zigzagged with bloodred and green graffiti. This is a giant ghost town now. No one’s around except for the victims in their cars on the highway. The sky fades from light to dark and then brightens again, as if the sun can’t make up its mind. She drops her backpack and is about to sink down when I see them.

  “Not there!” I grab her arm and jerk her away, just in time.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Fire ants.”

  There are mounds of them. I kick one of the small hills of sand and it rears up, tiny red ants poking out, springing to life, like an army erupting from a hidden bunker, scattering in all directions, running for cover. I learned about them the hard way. My first week in Texas I was outside in sandals and stepped on an anthill. The next morning I was covered with hellish red bites.

  We stop at a clearing farther away and finally drop down. I take out half a pill and tilt my head back.

  “Stop taking those,” she says. “You’re going to pass out!”

  I look at her and don’t answer.

  JILLIAN

  I finally sink down. I didn’t think it would be this hard.

  River looks at his phone. “Traffic’s moving, my dad says.” He shakes his head. “So what, now we run back and it stands still? No way I’m going back.”

  I couldn’t if I wanted to. “Any idea where we’re going to hide out once we’re back in Houston?”

  He pats his pocket. “I have the key to the school.”

  I tilt my head to the side. “Why didn’t you tell your dad that?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  I wait for him to explain, but he doesn’t.

  “How did you get it?”

  “Briggs gave us keys so we could get into the locker room when the school was closed.”

  “That was allowed?”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “He never asked for it back?”

  “Never had a chance …”

  “I don’t understand …”

  He waves his hand dismissively.

  It never occurred to me to take shelter in the school. It was a brick building. It looked like a fortress. It was way better than sitting inside a car on the freeway. “There are juice machines and probably food in the kitchen. Of course, we could be accused of breaking in.”

  “You think they’ll be looking for prints after a hurricane?” River gets to his feet. “Let’s get going. A few more miles. You ready?”

  Is there’s a choice?

  I once read about an ultra marathon in California, a 135-mile race in July across Death Valley where temperatures are over 120 degrees. They say it’s the world’s toughest foot race. It goes from below sea level in Death Valley up to Mount Whitney, over 14,000 feet high.

  I never understood who ran those races or why. Maybe guys like River, who needed to jump hurdles and test themselves. They needed victories in their lives to prove that they were strong and could overcome hardship. Or maybe it was about distraction, when everyday life didn’t offer you challenges and you needed to up the stakes to feel alive again.

  This isn’t Death Valley, but it feels like it. I think about that race as I stay in motion, slowing only to sip water before catching up to River. Suddenly I get a cramp, like a knife in the side of my hip. I stop and lean over. I can’t move. He glances behind him then runs back. “Blow out and rub it.” I try it, and it eases up. We keep going.

  He never asks how I’m doing. He keeps going, oblivious to me. Finally I slow down again.

  “I’m so thirsty and tired.” I can’t help myself. I’m not a stoic. I can’t pretend to be.

  “I didn’t force you to come.”

  No …

  He looks off annoyed, then turns back to me. “You can do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  He looks back at me coldly. “Because you have no goddamned choice.”

  My head throbs and every joint is burning, but rage or resolve propels me to keep moving. I think of River’s tattoo.

  Never. Give. In.

  I force myself to keep going, trying to understand why this is all happening. If logic’s gone, what’s left? I consider karmic payback because this is the first time I ignored my mom and ran off. Sari used to call me Miss Goody-Goody because I never got into trouble like other kids in school. I always studied when I had to. My grades were good, I never did drugs or drank much. But now everything was out of my control.

  My cell rings: my mom again. I drop the phone into the bottom of my backpack and run faster. I’m furious at her now—for abandoning me, for telling me what to do when she was on another planet. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be running a half marathon in weather so hot it can stop your heart.

  Chapter 13

  10 HOURS TO LANDFALL

  RIVER

  It’s raining now, a soft, steady downpour before the real show when the streets turn into streams. A granola bar and a liter of water, my Danielle diet. So what? I’m used to semi-starvation. That’s something you get good at when you’re locked away. It beats rancid food and nights with your head in the toilet, upchucking your guts, convinced you’re dying.

  “What’s the matter, hotshot, you don’t like hamburger meat mixed with worms?” The night guard stood at the bathroom door watching me heave again and again. He laughed. “I wouldn’t feed the shit they give you to my dog.”

  Then he’d go back to his desk and unpack the food he brought from home. He’d enjoy eating it in front of us, making a show of wiping the steak sauce from his mouth with his clean, white napkin.

  With my shaking hands, I slice the top off my water bottle with my knife and hold it out to catch rain
water.

  JILLIAN

  Kelly calls. “How boring is this?”

  Boring?

  “Jillian, you there?”

  “Yeah.” I try to pretend I’m not out of breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Why?”

  She doesn’t answer. “How far ahead of us are you?”

  No way to fudge this. “I’m not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I left. I ran from the car.”

  “Jill, what are you talking about?”

  “I left … with River. We didn’t think we’d make it on the highway.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back. To Houston.”

  “What the hell?”

  “You’re wasting your power,” River says, trying to grab my phone.

  I pull it away. “Don’t! Kel, I’ll call you back.”

  “Where in Houston? Tell me Jill! Stay on the phone!” She sounds scared. I’ve never heard that in Kelly’s voice before, and now it scares me. But I can’t tell her where we’re going. I disconnect.

  I reach into my backpack for a juice. Only six of twelve boxes left and two packs of peanut-butter crackers. Stupid to eat those, they’re dry, but you don’t exactly make smart food choices when you’re starving.

  My body feels horse-whipped from the run, everything red, blistered, achy, and swollen, my feet bologna-sized, the body’s way of saying, “Take a look at how you’re destroying yourself.” Oily sweat covers my skin. I must glow like I’m radioactive. I tear at flying strands of hair blindfolding my face.

  Whoosh! I lose my balance and pitch forward, landing in mud. “Shit!” I manage to pull myself up then slip again, my eyes tearing up. My legs, shorts, and hands are coated with mud. River glances over, but does nothing. I give up trying to wipe the filth away and rake my hands along the sides of my T-shirt.