The Predicteds (10 page)

That's when the tornado sirens go off.

“Damn it!” Jesse says, looking up at the sky. “We should head back to the car.” He grabs my hand, and we make a run for the car just as the sky opens up and spits out jagged pieces of hail.

When we get to the car, he pauses at the trunk and quickly pulls a blanket out, which I assume he's going to use to cover the seat of his black Mitsubishi Eclipse. I'm still pretty wet. Instead, he wraps the blanket tightly around me and gives me a warm hug. “Go ahead,” he says, guiding me into the passenger seat. “You'll warm up quickly once we get the heat going.”

The hail is coming down hard now, clapping loudly on the hood of his car. “I hope it doesn't leave dents,” I say.

“Me too. This is my dad's car.” He turns quickly down a tree-lined street and accelerates to well over forty, the houses on the street turning into a blur. He slows and pulls into a driveway.

“Your house?” I ask.

“Closer than my house,” he says. “Mine is all the way up the hill.” He points behind us. He pulls the car around back, past the three-car garage, and under the old carport next to it. “Perfect,” he says. “Wanna go in the house?”

We listen to the hail hammer on the roof of the carport. “Let's wait a second,” I say. Then, “Whose house it?”

“January's.”

Then I definitely don't want to go inside. Yet when the wind picks up, and the lawn chairs from the deck start whipping across the yard, I know we have to make a run for the house.

“Let's go,” I say with resignation.

A perfectly coiffed woman who smells like a medley of hyacinth, lemons, and money seems unsurprised to see us, as if she's used to visitors popping up during hailstorms. Probably happens all the time in Oklahoma. She efficiently shepherds us to a large closet underneath the stairs, where she insists that we stay until we know for sure that we'll be safe.

There isn't really enough room for all of us—Mrs. Morrison, Jesse, me, and Hillary, January's little sister—but we manage. Mrs. Morrison calls me Deborah and makes me put on dry clothes before joining the group—“I don't want you to get everything all wet, dear,” she says while turning her nose up at me.

After I change into a faded T-shirt of January's and a pair of red sweatpants that are far too tight, I take a minute in the half-bathroom off the kitchen to push my hair over the bald spot. I find a barrette in my damp purse and gently clip the hair in place. Not great, but at least I don't look like the Swamp Thing's twin. I stuff my hat into my purse. In the hallway, I notice rows of family pictures taken at lakes and Disneyland and next to the fireplace at Christmas. Two smiling faces in each picture: January and Hillary. When I look closer, though, I can see that each picture has been carefully cut. An arm or a leg or some fingers belonging to a missing third person are in almost every shot.

That's the shooter, I realize with horror. It's been less than a month since his death, and he's already been excised from the Morrison household. I feel sad thinking about Mrs. Morrison bent over those photos with a razor blade, removing evidence of the shooter—her son—from her life. It's the creepiest thing I've ever seen.

There are no chairs in the space under the stairs, and even if there were, we couldn't sit on them, because the closet is basically a crawl space with about five feet of clearance at the far end. Nobody answers me when I muse out loud, wondering why people in Oklahoma don't build basements. Wouldn't that be the first thing you'd build?

We sit scrunched against the walls, Jesse and I next to each other, staring at Mrs. Morrison, who is wearing earrings the size of her head. I'm wondering how she doesn't fall over, when Hillary whips out a flashlight and a Harry Potter book to read out loud. In a strong, shrill voice, she begins, pausing only when the TV, turned up loudly in the living room, suspends programming to tell us something about the storm—the storm that is likely going to pass Quiet. “It's heading straight for Guthrie,” the weatherman says gleefully, as if he were just waiting for something to take out Guthrie anyway. The smell of Mrs. Morrison's perfume makes me feel like I'm trapped in a rich old woman's lingerie drawer.

“Is your dad at Marine?” she asks when it is evident that we've listened to Hillary for as long as politeness dictates. It takes me a second, but I figure out that she means Marine Motors, the boat factory just outside of town, which is the second-largest employer in Quiet after Quiet State College.

“No,” I say, not wanting to explain about my father—mostly, because I don't know anything about him. I used to ask, but Melissa never has much to say about him, except that she met him in graduate school, and he left before I was born. Even my grandmother never mentions him, and she's one of those people who will pull you aside and talk about the details of her irritable bowel syndrome. “My mom is a professor at the college.”

“My dad died when I was only one year old,” Hillary says haughtily, as if this is some sort of achievement. “My brother died too,” she adds.

“Shush,” Mrs. Morrison says, her face a tight mask. “We don't talk about that.” Then she sticks her finger in her mouth, leans toward me, and wipes underneath my eyes. “Raccoon eyes,” she tells me, wiping mascara on a tissue she takes out of the sleeve of her mint-green sweater set—the kind of thing you'd wear to sell southwestern jewelry at a swap meet. “A big no-no,” she tells me with the wag of a finger. I'm stunned—did she actually just spit on my face? I rub at my eyes with the back of my hands and try not to puke.

“Gross,” Hillary says—either about my raccoon eyes or about the spit—and returns to Harry Potter, Book 5, one that I never actually finished reading. She reads silently this time, but I can see her lips moving.

“I think we can leave now,” I tell Jesse firmly.

“Let's stay a little longer,” Mrs. Morrison says hopefully, “just to be on the safe side. Everybody stay put.”

“It's fine,” I tell her through clenched teeth.

“I'll check on the weather,” Jesse says, ruffling Hillary's hair on the way out of the cramped space.

“So nice to have a man in the house,” Mrs. Morrison sighs, looking longingly at Jesse's back as he walks to the living room. “A real man.”

Eww. Did she just say that?

“It's fine,” Jesse calls out to the rest of us.

“Let's make s'mores,” Hillary says as we emerge single-file from our hiding place.

“Think of your hips,” Mrs. Morrison replies.

Hillary looks like she weighs about thirteen pounds.

“Do it. Eat a bunch of them,” I whisper in Hillary's ear. She just stares at me blankly.

It's lighter outside than it was when we arrived, the wind has died down, the hail has melted already, and the wind chimes are pleasantly singing in the distance. “We should do that again sometime,” Hillary says, looking adoringly at Jesse.

“I don't know, Hilly. Weren't you scared?”

“No!” she says indignantly. “I'm not scared of tornadoes. Or thunderstorms. That's January.”

“I assume she's safe,” Mrs. Morrison says, “at the soccer game. But I bet they were rained out. I hope they went to the gym to wait out the bad weather. January just loves sporting events. She's a basketball cheerleader, you know.” This last part is directed at me, and I just nod, even though I'm quite positive that January is not a cheerleader. Mrs. Morrison seems to live in a world of her own making, though, and maybe in that world January wears a QH sweater and chants “Here-we-go” from the sidelines of the basketball court. “She'd be beside herself if she was out during a storm like this.” Mrs. Morrison looks to Jesse. “You know, that child has always been afraid of the tiniest bit of weather. Ever since she was a child, she's been afraid of thunder, lightning, wind—you name it. I don't know what gets into her, but I worry about her. Last time she got caught in a thunderstorm alone, I found her hiding underneath her bed, sobbing.”

The color in Jesse's face seems to fade—he goes from tan to white. He looks…scared. I poke him in the shoulder. He doesn't even notice me.

“She's a big chicken,” Hillary says. “It's a condition. It's called lilapsophobia—a phobia of tornadoes and other dangerous weather.” Hillary then spells the word for me, like maybe I might need it for a spelling bee or something.

Jesse looks at me sideways, a strange expression on his face. “Guess we better go. Thanks for letting me keep my car protected. My dad is going to kill me if there's even the tiniest dent.”

“Hail is an act of God,” Hillary says solemnly, as if she is the claims adjustor from the insurance company. I remember that's what Melissa's insurance person said after she hit a deer coming home from my grandparents' house one summer.

Jesse rushes me out to the car. I barely have time to grab my wet clothes, which Mrs. Morrison has placed in a plastic bag using only the tips of her fingers, as if they were contaminated. “Nice to meet you, Deborah,” she says as we leave. She smiles too widely. “I hope you'll come back again soon. I simply adore meeting January's friends.” She gives me a Joker-esque smile that creeps me out.

I shiver when we get into the car. “That was surreal,” I say. “Don't you think that was weird?”

“January isn't at any game. She's going to need help.”

“Because of a hailstorm and a few gusts of wind?”

Jesse turns to look at me. “Trust me. I know January. This could be really serious. We don't know what she's capable of doing.”

“Don't you think you're being a little dramatic?” I ask.

“You don't know January,” he replies ominously.

Jesse was always running to save January. Everybody assumed he was in love with her. But I wasn't going to tell Daphne that.

—Dizzy Lewis-Strong in an interview with the
Quiet Daily News

Jesse turns hard into the muddy vacant field behind Bear's Auto Repair, a ramshackle trailer with an old-fashioned gas pump in front. He brings the car to a jerking stop next to an old pickup, gets out of the car, and heads toward the abandoned train car before I even have my door open. But then he stops and comes back to my side of the car. “I'm sorry, Daphne. I really am. I'll just be a minute.” Before I answer, he sticks his head inside, and kisses me gently on the lips. Then he shuts my door. I get the message: he wants me to stay put.

I nod my head and give him a fake smile. He seriously expects me to sit in the car and wait for him? I don't think so.

I kick off my shoes in the car and sink into the mud when I step out. It's cold and mushy, with the consistency of Melissa's oatmeal. Better than ruining my shoes. I swear under my breath. It seems like January is always on the edge of peril. It's strange the way everyone rushes to her side, as if she's a breakable vase on a high shelf, teetering at the edge during a low, rumbly earthquake. The way Jesse just knows she's in trouble signals something between them that I'm not sure I can understand. And he just knows where she is. Are people who are
just friends
that connected to each other?

I trudge through the mud about three steps before I stumble and end up elbows-first in muddy grass. “Damn it!” I say loudly.

I guess I can understand January's fear of bad weather—it sounds kind of bizarre, but in Oklahoma, being afraid of weather is, in my opinion, totally logical. Where else would swirly tornadoes appear out of nowhere and pick up things like barns and silos? But Jesse's reaction feels overly dramatic, sort of histrionic. He's been somewhat—what's the word? Ominous?—ominous all night. Especially after he said that he wanted to talk to me about January.

Against my will, my brain starts racing. I think of this stupid soap opera my grandmother watches. When I talk to her on the phone, she tells me about the lives of the people on her story.
The girlfriend is always the last to know when the man is running around with every floozy in flowered underpants
, Grandma tells me in that funny, old-fashioned way she talks.
There's another broad, but the girlfriend is just plain out to lunch, the dumb cluck
.

Are Jesse and January together, like a couple? Am I the other woman?
No,
I tell myself.
That's ridiculous. If he's in love with January, why take me along to rescue her? Prince Charming doesn't show up with a wet-haired, bald-spotted girl on the white horse behind him. But maybe he doesn't even realize he's in love with her,
I think suddenly. That's even worse. Unrequited love is the worst, according to Grandma. I squeeze my eyes shut and will these thoughts away. This is why restricting relationships to hooking up every now and then—for a good make-out session—is highly underrated. I'm actually turning into one of the girls from Grandma's stories.

I'm covered in mud now, but I keep walking toward the light of the half-moon making its appearance from behind the remaining gray cloud cover. It's just bright enough for me to make out the billowy movement of a silhouette standing near the edge of the train car. I squint at the graffiti-covered side. I see weird symbols and words.
BE AWARE. I WILL HAUNT YOU.
The green letters practically glow against the night sky. Piles of garbage surround the whole area. It's so dirty and grimy that I can't imagine why anyone would ever come here, yet Jesse said on the way here that it's “January's place, where she always goes when she's trying to disappear.” The moonlight illuminates Jesse, who approaches the unrecognizable dark figure, and then the two of them disappear behind the train car. The sound of cars passing on the road a few hundred feet in the distance becomes almost soothing.

I decide I'm going in. After I count to a hundred. That's all I'm giving them. One minute, forty seconds.

At eighty-two, two figures emerge in front of the train car. January is walking a bit off to the side of Jesse with her skinny, bare arms across her chest. I audibly gasp when I see her hair—she's cut off the wild, long lion's mane. Instead, she's sporting a blond Louise Brooks. The real kind. Short, short. Pixie-ish.

I instinctively touch my own head. At once, I feel conventional in comparison. My cut is just plain dull next to hers. Without the frizzy hair clouding her face, she looks almost…normal. She's stunning, actually. Not beautiful—not even pretty exactly. But dazzling somehow. Her features are perfectly contoured, her neck long and graceful. She shakes her head once, twice, and I realize with a pang of something sharp and unrecognizable that she looks like the kind of sophisticated woman—not girl—that you photograph in black and white next to the Eiffel Tower. She's the wrinkled photo you carry, because she's the girl who can't be captured any other way.

Suddenly, I feel disgustingly normal and well adjusted, too happy and unscarred to be interesting. Too boring to be someone's unrequited love. I'm just the dumb cluck. With muddy clothes.

“I told you to stay in the car,” Jesse says to me.

“Excuse me? I don't take orders from you or anyone else.” I stop, more because my feet are stuck again than because I'm making a point.

Jesse stops too. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn't mean it like that.” January tries to walk ahead of us, but Jesse grabs her arm to slow her down. She shakes him off.

From behind her appears a third person, almost like magic—an apparition in a wife beater and denim shorts. It's Nate Gormley, that kid from the lake. “What are you doing here?” I ask him. He just ignores me. “Everything okay?” I ask Jesse.

He nods at me and then reaches over and pulls January toward him, hard. She staggers in the mud and loses a flip-flop. “Let's go,” he tells her.

She kicks off the other shoe and stumbles over the even ground barefoot. “I'm going with him,” she says and points to Nate.

Nate shrugs. “Whatever, dude.”

“She's drunk. Majorly drunk.” Jesse sighs. “Come on, Jan. Come with us.”

She stumbles toward the pickup, not Jesse's car. “Nah,” she says. “I'm going with Nate.” Nate has to help her into the old truck, giving her a big push on her skinny behind. Even so, she almost falls out twice. He doesn't even look at Jesse when he gets in the truck behind January and pulls away, spraying mud on Jesse's car—and on us. Muddy water runs down my face.

“She's drinking again. And she had a panic attack when that storm hit.”

“Is she going to be okay?

“I don't know,” he says. “She's been like this ever since…” Jesse trails off mid-sentence.

“Ever since what? Since her brother? That can't be easy.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “It's not easy. Everyone has done their best to forget about him.”

“Even his mom,” I say, thinking about those pictures in Mrs. Morrison's living room.

He opens the car door for me, and I hesitate before getting in. I'm going to get mud everywhere. “Don't worry about it,” Jesse says, as if reading my mind. “I'll take care of it tomorrow.”

When he gets into the driver's seat, he puts his hand over mine. “I'm sorry, Daphne. I didn't mean for this to ruin our night.”

“No big deal,” I say, but I move my hand away from his. He senses the change in temperature. “Can I ask you something?” Dizzy's gossip about Jesse and the phantom older girl—the girl Jesse was allegedly stalking—looms large in my mind. I've always been honest and straightforward. Why not ask him?

“Of course.”

“Before me, before I moved here, were you”—I try to think of the right word—“
involved
with someone, someone who was really important to you—?”

He surprises me when he interrupts. “January and I went out a few times, but it was never anything more than that. We were never, you know, a couple or whatever. I care about her. Just as a friend.”

“Before January, I mean.”

He shifts in the driver's seat, a smile overtaking his face. “Daphne, are you jealous?”

“No!” I say too quickly.

“Why are you suddenly interested in my love life?” he says playfully.

“I'm not!” I yell, horrified because I feel like a fool, and double horrified because I hate the idea of being one of
those
girls. “I'm just curious,” I say, trying to regain my composure.

“Well,” he says, leaning toward me, “I'm telling you that I'm here with you because I like you.” He kisses me on the nose before he turns the key in the ignition and shifts his car into drive.

“So there's no older girl, someone you had trouble…letting go? A former girlfriend you want to tell me about?”

“No girls anywhere,” he says, suddenly cheerful—the most cheerful I've seen him. “I'm practically a social pariah.”

I drop the subject, and as we drive away I twist around to look back at the abandoned railroad car. I have to blink when I see him—he's standing at the edge of the field. A flash of light from the neon sign lands on him, and I see his face clearly. He looks up at the sky and then straight at me. Josh Heller. Even in the dark and from this distance, I recognize him: a red-headed ghost. What is he doing here? And why didn't we see him before?

I blink my eyes, and he is gone. All I see are trees, rusted-out abandoned cars, old refrigerators, and mattress boxes with the springs sticking out. This is apparently everyone's dumping ground.

I face forward. “Was anyone else out there? Back there?” I ask.

“Nope. That's what worries me.” Jesse's face falls, his joviality from a moment ago completely gone. “January shouldn't be out here at all, especially with that Nate kid when she's been drinking. And when it's raining. She gets so terrified.”

“Oh. I thought I saw Josh Heller too.”

Jesse steps on the brake, and we both slide forward in our seats a bit. He puts the car in reverse and drives back to our parking spot—my neck flopping around like a baby's.

This time, he doesn't even tell me to wait in the car, but I do anyway. Jesse stalks out of the car, walking quickly with big steps. I look behind me—there are no other cars in the parking lot. Jesse is gone for a while—more than ten minutes, according to the clock on his dashboard. Just when I start to worry, he appears at the driver's side door.

“There's nobody out here,” he says.

I don't argue with him, but I do give him a
suit yourself
shrug—something I perfected around Melissa, who always thinks she's right.

We move slowly over the muddy parking lot. I twist around and look behind me again, but there's nothing there, save for the garbage.

“We used to be close when we were kids. All of us were friends—Josh, January, me, and him.” I know he's referring to the shooter. “Josh is my stepbrother, you know.” I nod. “So we've kind of grown up together. Our parents got married when we were eleven. And back when I lived with my mom, before she moved, I lived next door to January. They're like family to me. But Josh and I barely speak these days.”

“Why?”

“A lot of reasons.”

Jesse pulls the car onto a road with a sudden burst of power. We're on some winding, dark U.S. highway that I never knew led to Quiet. He speeds up until the speedometer hits seventy, and then he levels off.

He seems so serious now, his shoulders knotted up and his hands gripping the steering wheel. He's almost a different person than the one I saw just a few minutes ago—the one who was joking around, making me laugh. He steers the car left on Main. He's taking the long way—all the way around the football stadium—back to my house.

We ride in silence until Jesse flips on the satellite radio. “Want to pick a station?” he asks.

I lean over and stare at the rows of buttons and the green-lit screen telling me we are currently on Outlaw Country. I make a face. I press buttons and watch the digital screen move from gas mileage stats to a compass to a temperature reading. “What the hell?” I say under my breath, grateful that the car stereo in Melissa's car only has two buttons: up and down. Jesse snickers.

“What?”

“You look so cute trying to figure out the stereo.” The kind, gentle Jesse is back with one hand on the wheel and the other on the center console. He keeps his eyes on the road while he moves his right hand to mine and gently pushes my finger on one of the pre-programmed buttons. The music immediately shifts from twangy Waylon Jennings to old-timey jazz. He moves my hand with his, and we set both of them on the center console between us.

“Daphne?” he asks when we finally pull into my driveway. “Do you know why I shouldn't be here with you?”

“I haven't the slightest idea,” I say.

“Because I could see myself falling in love with you.”

I jerk my head sideways to face him, but he's staring straight ahead, his eyes trained on the garage door. “I'm not sure what to say. I—”

Jesse gently reaches over and puts his hand over my mouth. “Shhh.” He lets his hand fall.

“Maybe we don't need to talk,” I whisper just as our lips meet, the taste of mud lingering long after we part.