The Hurricane (19 page)

“I bet everyone is trying to use them,” Daniel pointed out.

“There might be signal but no service for quite some time,”
Edward said.

“Honey, don’t just keep redialing.” Their mother snapped her
fingers in Zola’s direction. “Just try once an hour. Don’t waste your battery.”

Anna seemed like she was going to say something about the
batteries—maybe remind them of her charging station—but chose not to.

“Let’s not get all worked up,” their father said. “These
things will come back in time, but trying to rush them won’t make it happen any
faster.” He gathered plates from the table and stacked them together. Daniel
watched his mom as she studied his actions. She handed her own empty plate to
him, her eyes darting from him to Carlton.

“Thanks for cooking,” their father said, nodding to Carlton.
“I’m going to get out of ya’lls hair for a while. Tomorrow, though, I’m gonna
want to borrow that saw.” He turned and looked to Edward, who seemed to have
bonded with their father during the day’s ride. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to
head over and get that rope we talked about, so I’ll have it in the morning.”

“What’re you gonna do in the morning?” Daniel asked.

“
We
,” his father said. He glanced up. “We’re gonna
get that tree off this house I built. We’re not gonna wait around for someone
else to come and do it for us.”

His father gave him a most sober stare. He stepped between
Daniel and Anna and strolled purposefully toward Edward’s house.

Edward thanked Carlton and his mom for their hospitality and
hurried off as well. Daniel’s mom stood still, an empty plate in her hand. She
looked up at the broken bough of the massive tree hanging over the top of the
roof.

“I guess I’d better go,” Anna told Daniel, the lilt of her
voice seeming to complain at having to do so. She stood up and brushed the back
of her shorts with her hands. Daniel stood as well and took her plate, stacking
it under his own.

“Maybe I should come over and help Dad carry whatever he’s
borrowing.” He knew it was a transparent excuse to stay near her, but he didn’t
care. If he could be so bold in the back of the Bronco, he could let someone
know he’d rather not see them go.

Anna smiled. She bit her lip and nodded. Daniel threw the
plates in a trash bag Hunter was using to gather dishes. He mumbled to his mom
that he’d be right back, then chased Anna off the deck and around the house
toward the street.

••••

“That was an amazing meal,” Daniel said, making small talk
while they walked the short trip between their houses.

“Yeah.” Anna turned her head to follow the flight of a
startled blue jay. “Your brother seems like a cool guy. And your sister’s
sweet.”

Daniel refrained from arguing the points. “Do you miss your
brother?” he asked.

Anna nodded. She kicked a small limb off the street. “A lot.
It was cool for a while to have the house to myself, but now it’s just boring.”

“How do you like being home schooled? And why did your
parents choose to do that?”

“They didn’t. I did.” Anna tucked her hands into her back
pocket. She veered to the side and nudged Daniel with her shoulder. “After
middle school, I told them I was either gonna home school or just drop out and
wait until I could take my GED. I couldn’t handle it.”

“Couldn’t handle what?”

She looked away. “Just stuff. Girls. Meanness.” She tried to
smile at Daniel, but her eyes were shining wet. “I was always sort of this
tomgirl. I enjoyed tinkering with my dad in the garage. I liked playing
whatever my brother was playing. I mean, I loved my mom and all, but she was
always the one working long hours and away on business. There was a lot of role
reversal in my house, and it didn’t match what my peers were going through.”

“You and I have a lot in common, then,” Daniel said. “Girls
have a long history of being mean to me as well.” He laughed, hoping she’d take
the admission as a joke.

“Maybe they hate us for being cooler than them,” Anna
offered.

“I’m sure that’s it.”

They stopped in front of Anna’s driveway and looked up at
the house. Daniel nearly asked her if she wanted to keep walking some more,
maybe to Georgia and back, but her father waved from the open garage, so they
trudged up toward the house.

Daniel’s dad was coiling a long length of rope when they
joined them. Another neat loop of rope lay at his feet. “You don’t have any
webbing by any chance, do you?” he asked Anna’s father.

“I’ve got these tow straps,” he said, digging them out of a
box and holding them up.

“Perfect.”

“I came over to see if you needed help carrying this stuff
back,” Daniel said.

His father flashed him a knowing smile, his eyes darting happily
between him and Anna.

“Hey,” Anna said, “I never showed you how that water flows
down to our sink.”

“Oh, yeah, I meant to ask you about that.”

“Hey Dad, I’m gonna take Daniel up to see our cistern.”

Edward laughed and worked to unknot lengths of flat yellow
webbing. “Go right ahead,” he said.

“I’ll wait for you,” his father said, “so don’t be too
long.”

Daniel waved and followed Anna into the house. She checked
over her shoulder with a smile before turning a corner and padding up the
stairs. Daniel hurried after her.

At the top of the stairs, she rounded a banister, her hand
squeaking on the wood, and paced toward one of the bedrooms. She stood outside
the door, looking in and waiting for Daniel.

“We were filling up the bathtubs before the storm,” she
said. “Dad and I were trying to think of ways to store up even more.”

Daniel joined her and looked inside. There was a kiddie pool
in the middle of the bedroom, sitting on top of a bed frame and box spring. The
mattress was leaning on its side against a wall, out of the way.

“What in the world?” Daniel asked.

“Come look.” Anna walked around the pool to the bedroom
window. She stuck a finger against the glass, pointing to a hose outside. “We
set it up in a hurry, but it works great. Once we got the pool up here, Dad
reached out the window and popped the downspout off the gutter. He held me
while I taped that hose to where the downspout was.”

Daniel looked up through the window to see a length of
garden hose duct-taped to the short drop of spout leading off the gutter. The
hose came through the top part of the window, which was cracked open, and led
to the pool.

“Mom would’ve killed us,” Anna said. She laughed.

“So the water flows from the gutter into the pool,” Daniel
said. He looked back at the pool, which was half full. “Why didn’t it overflow?
There was tons of rain with that storm.”

“It did overflow,” Anna said. She pointed to a hose trailing
off the upper lip of the pool, gobs of caulk rimming a small indention that had
been cut into the plastic. The hose snaked straight from the elevated lip of
the pool and out the bottom of the window. “See? The pool overflowed into the
sink all night, where the excess went down the drain and back outside. We let
the gutters run clean first, then started collecting as much as we could.”

“This hose looks like it goes up a little.” Daniel ran his
hand along the length of green hose, checking the angle.

Anna nodded. “As long as you don’t let any air in, it’ll
keep siphoning off. The carpet did get a little wet from the house shaking so
much when the wind blew. Water was sloshing everywhere, and we’d designed it to
keep the pool full. Next time, I’d probably set the overflow hose a little
lower.”

Daniel looked the contraption over. Along with the charging
station outside, it was like Anna and her Father were a Rube Goldberg factory.
“Do you get extra credit for any of this stuff?”

Anna laughed. “I wish. Unfortunately, it’s all standardized
testing for memorized crap you could just look up if you needed to. My dad and
I just do stuff like this for fun.”

Daniel felt himself beaming at the idea of doing such things
for fun. “It’s pretty awesome,” he said. He turned to Anna, who was smiling at
him and blushing. She tucked some hair behind her ear. “I think
you’re
pretty awesome,” he added.

Anna reached out and grabbed his hand. Daniel felt chill
bumps rush up and down his arms and legs. His scalp tingled, and his
temperature rose.

“If I find out you have a girlfriend—” Anna began, heading
off somewhere Daniel hadn’t expected.

“I don’t,” he said quickly.

She took a step closer. “But if I find out you do, and this
is some sorta post-hurricane game of yours, and the only reason you’re hanging
out with me is because I’m within walking distance and your girlfriend is stuck
somewhere without a car—”

“I swear,” Daniel said. He felt himself sweating from the
surge of conflicting emotions, of arousal and fear.

“Because you see how creative I can get.” She waved a hand
at the pool. “My revenge would be ingenious.”

“I’ve never really had a girlfriend in my li—”

Anna leaned forward and kissed him. It wasn’t like his kiss
with Amanda Hicks, forceful and raw and probing. It was soft and tender. Her
lips seemed to jolt electricity into his, and he could feel the blood rushing
out of his head, leaving him dizzy. Daniel didn’t know what to do with his
hands, but he wanted to do something special. He placed them on either of
Anna’s cheeks and held them there. Their lips remained pressed together,
trembling.

When she pulled away, Daniel felt like crying for the loss,
or maybe for the pure joy of it having happened. He was grinning like a fool,
could feel his cheeks cramping. Anna smiled at him, her eyes fluttering, a look
of pure contentment on her face.

“That was amazing,” he whispered. He felt like such a fool
for saying it. Like such a fool for starting his senior year and being so
inexperienced with sex that a simple kiss could make him feel like he could
fly. But he knew in that instant, as Anna nodded, silently agreeing with his
assessment, that he was a
lucky
fool. For he had found a fellow reject,
a girl too comfortable in her own skin to dress up and play like the others. He
grabbed her hand and held it to his lips and kissed her fingers and fought the
urge to say crazy things.

“Your dad is probably waiting on you,” Anna said with a
smile.

Daniel kissed her hand again. He knew if he wanted to, that
he could bend forward and kiss her lips, her cheek, her nose, her forehead. The
smile on her face said it was all possible. He was now a superhero elite.
Nothing could stop him. His chest was cinderblocks full of glowing steel.

“I’ll come see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“And the day after,” Anna said.

Daniel smiled. As he ran down the steps, trying not to pass
out and go tumbling head over heels, he found himself looking forward to a
tomorrow for the first time in forever.

Daniel spent the night rolling around amid a tangle of
blankets on Hunter’s floor, his mind spinning as it dreamed of impossible
things like being in love and moving massive trees off houses. The morning came
with a clattering of chirping birds, their having returned from wherever the
storm had blown them or wherever they had hidden away. Their songs roused
Daniel from his first bit of good sleep; he woke and felt the summer’s morning chill
breezing through the window.

Daniel untangled himself, stood, stretched and looked out
the window at the glowing and splintered forest beyond the back yard. Hunter
lay on his back, his mouth wide open, the snuffles of contented sleep rattling
in his throat.

“Lucky bastard,” Daniel whispered. He walked quietly out the
room and snuck into his own. His sister was lying on a bed made up of a
sleeping bag and comforter, a single sheet draped over her from toes to
shoulders. She turned her head away from the window and smiled at Daniel as he
tip-toed toward his dresser. “Forgot to set out clothes,” he whispered.

She nodded and turned to gaze at the brightening sky. Daniel
snuck a shirt and another pair of shorts out of his dresser, wondering when he
was going to be able to wash what he’d worn the last few days. He stole a
glance at his bed on the way out, which was mounded around his brother’s
girlfriend. One thing he and Hunter had agreed on while getting ready for bed
the night before: their sleeping arrangements had been better off
before
they’d set out to “rescue” him.

Outside, Daniel felt the pleasing air of a Beaufort
late-summer morning. There was a chill that the clear sky cautioned one to
enjoy, for it would soon be burned off. The birds and squirrels were back to
their foraging and mating games, giving the mortally wounded trees a film of
life and activity. The waxy green of the leaves lucky enough to survive the
storm glittered as the barest of breezes trembled through them. Everything
seemed vibrant and sparkling and new. The day was awesome with possibility.

He carried a jug of water, two cups, and the last of the
Pop-Tarts out toward the tool shed, finding that the spectacle of the day, or
perhaps the kiss from the night before, had swept away a layer or two of
resentment toward his father. The tool shed felt less and less apt a place for
him. It had begun to seem cruel.

The front door of the shed was propped open to let in the
nice air. His father was sitting on a bucket, tugging on his shoes. He looked
up and smiled at Daniel, a few days growth on his face giving him a rugged
appearance.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning, Dad.” Daniel sniffed at the smell of gasoline.
“You wanna eat out here?” Daniel looked to the yard. “There’s plenty of logs to
sit on.”

His father laughed. “Sure. Same grub as yesterday?”

Daniel looked at the supplies in his hands. It looked like
prison food. His dad stood and slapped him on the back. “I love Pop-Tarts,” he
said. “Boat food.” He waved toward one of the bigger trees laying on its side
in the yard.