|Monday April 13th|

On County Road is a Cedar Elm, with a pair of black soccer boots entangled in its branches. The boots belonged to Zachery Evans, the victim of a hit-and-run six months before; he'd been crushed under the weight of a thirty-six-ton tanker bound for Oregon.

The boots sanctified a shrine on consecrated ground, where the soccer team had held vigil. Paradise lay secluded from the state highway. If you drew a straight line from Fort Worth to Wichita Falls, Paradise sat smack bang in the middle. As a result, trucks ripped down this route in the dead of night in a bid to avoid the highway's turnpikes.

When Zachary Evans met his fate, the natural order of things felt disrupted; the sun rises in the east, spring ushers in summer, and children are supposed to outlive their parents. The townsfolk were devout Christians, but in the days preceding his departure, even the converted began questioning whether God's plan had gone awry.

The summer he died lasted forever, but two seasons on, it was as if he never existed. The shade under the Elm no longer had a ceaseless stream of late-night visitors. Former teammates and 'Netflix and chill' buddies moved on with their lives. Zachary's memory was now a mass of weathered beer cans and discarded cigarette butts.

That was the first sign something was wrong. The wind whistled through the cornfields, and one of Zachary's crumpled Budweiser cans hurtled past and somersaulted against the asphalt.

A second gust tore through the thin fabric of my T-shirt, stealing the breath from my lungs and erupting in a shiver of goosebumps down my arms. I rubbed them to ward off the chill and picked up my pace, descending the narrow road.

Headlights glinted in the distance; gravel kicked up the tires of a fire engine red Toyota as it approached.

The full beam of the headlights obliterated my vision. I squinted and shielded my eyes as the Toyota swerved around me and slammed on its brakes. Coming to an abrupt halt, smoke rose from the exhaust and dissipated into the air.

Daniel Garry stepped out of the car in his soccer gear. "Is there something wrong with you? You are standing in the middle of the road?"

My body shrunk in on itself. "I missed the last school bus, lost track of time at the library." Taking a step back, I jammed my hands into my pockets.

"What's your first name again? Nathaniel, Nathan?"

"Nick," I replied.

Daniel bent down and glided his fingers over the wheel arch. The car was a parting gift, one Daniel adored. It was ironic the token given to him by his late father had an equal chance of buying Daniel the same early grave the way he drove it.

"Why are you in such a rush?" I shivered as the temperature plunged again. I cupped my hands around my mouth and blew into them.

"You're kidding, right? Are you the last person on earth to be told?" Daniel rose to his feet with a look that implied I was an idiot. "They've issued a tornado watch. It's for real this time. They say we should prepare; the weather is favorable. The news is being broadcast all over local radio."

We saw our share of watches, but the threat was only substantial if they upgraded the status to a warning. Paradise was accustomed to extreme weather.

"I'd give you a ride home, but we're not friends, are we?" It was more of a statement than a question, but I expected no less from him.

Daniel yanked the driver's side door wider. Laurie whatever-her-name-was sat in the front seat, Cindy Ackerman in the back. Laurie focused ahead while a flicker of recognition crossed Cindy's face.

She bolted upright in her seat.

I had seen her in school more times than I expected she'd ever seen me. Cindy was strawberry-blond, or just blond, depending on whom you asked. I hardly knew her, but Cindy's appeal was universal; the scrawled musings on the bathroom stalls at Jefferson Memorial High were a testament to that.

"Will you hurry?" Laurie fixed Daniel with an unwavering glare. She flipped down the visor and fiddled with her jet-black bangs. Glancing in my direction, I smiled back, but she rolled her eyes as if to say, 'Dick.'

Daniel slid into the driver's seat beside her and slammed the door shut. Leaning over the center console, he kissed her forehead to appease her. Cindy whipped around as the engine sprang to life, and her palm fanned out on the passenger window.

There are times when you're gripped by an uneasy feeling out of nowhere; you note down a license plate or take a mental list of someone's features, all because of a sense something isn't quite right.

Taking stock of Cindy's face, her lower lip trembled. My gaze lingered on her as the car rolled forward. A restlessness washed over me. I had the urge to yell, "Stop!" But I didn't. Instead, I swallowed my words like shards of glass until Cindy was no more than a set of tail lights evanesced into a near-inky-black night.

Crossing the road at the stop sign, I ducked through a gap in the chicken wire fence adjacent to Lindell's Auto Salvage. Access to the compound was cordoned off by a tall chain-link fence choked in ivy.

I swung my backpack in front of me and pulled out my cell phone. I had nine missed calls and three text messages from Mom. Why hadn't I heard any of them? The entire senior year posted their storm provisions on social media, grinning against a backdrop of improvised bunker picnics and apocalypse parties; their vocabulary restricted to the hashtag 'DerekIsComing.'

How had I missed this? And where was the threesome going amidst a tornado watch? I searched for Cindy Ackerman's Instagram profile picture in what might be regarded as an invasion of privacy. When I discovered it, far from being angelic, it was an image of a pug dressed in a bikini. My finger hovered over the image until it froze and ghosted white; a row of cells refused to load because the cell service had plummeted.

Tapping the screen, I tried to bring it back when an icon highlighted.

I liked her picture.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I held my phone higher and turned in a circle. If I could get a signal bar, I could take it back, but it was pointless; the app wasn't loading. I slipped my phone into my back pocket and forced Cindy's Monday night plans to the back of my mind.

Complete darkness had fallen when I arrived home, and the wind now howled around me. Plywood and timber off-cuts lay battened to the windowpanes. Marching up the porch steps, I twisted my key in the lock and crept through the door.

Zeppelin barked, snubbing off my walk-of-shame, and bounded over, thrashing his tail against my leg.

"Shh, Zepp," I pleaded.

Mom peeked around the kitchen door, loading batteries into a flashlight. She blinked in quick succession, and I knew I was in trouble.

"You stroll into the house during an emergency and don't call me on the way to tell me you're safe? Where on earth have you been? You've not been answering my calls."

"Sorry, I didn't hear any of them. No one told me they issued a tornado watch."

"Did the wind not tip you off?" Her eyes rolled, and her foot tapped with an authority I didn't have. "We needed help with the storm preparations..." She let her sentence trail off while I filled in the mental blanks.

"I know, I..." I paused.

The light emitting from the television switched, casting the room in a crimson glow. It drew my attention to the news bulletin ticker from the National Weather Service. Golf ball size hail pelted a newscaster as he cowered under an umbrella. The update scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

It will be fine. I had not seen the hail yet, and the station must be at least thirty miles from Paradise.

But Zeppelin stilled; his ears pricked up, and his head tilted. My eyes fixed on an aperture in the boarded windows left as a peephole; cloud-to-ground lightning forked on the horizon with a distinct lack of thunder. The trees in the yard were statuesque. The rope swing threaded around the branch of an aging oak became static; it was like staring at a Polaroid.

Mom's demeanor morphed into something more urgent. "Your Dad's still in the garage, go tell him it's time. I'll get your sister." She chucked me her flashlight and bolted up the stairs, taking two at a time. "Go," she screamed when I hadn't moved.

A roar reminiscent of a freight train sounded; similar to jet engines before take-off, it was now close enough to make my blood run ice-cold. I needed to do something. Adrenaline kicked in, and I knew I could be out of the front door and in the garage in four strides. I grabbed the door handle and bolted.

The hurricane made landfall at 8 pm on a Monday, sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico. By 9 pm, it had spurned a tornado, and 'Derek' arrived at our doorstep. By the time he departed, everything about our town was once again different. When the morning came, I would come to understand why storms are named after people.

The Zachary Evans Effect

1 Comments