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Dad spent the next day pacing around the house all wild one minute, then sitting out back, cleaning his guns, with the radio in the truck cranked up high the next. When we crossed paths, he acted like he couldn’t even see me. I didn’t want to leave the house with my face all busted up, but I couldn’t stand the way Dad looked right through me either, so I stayed in my room. Someone must have complained again, because Lou’s Police cruiser rolled up just before two p.m. I didn’t hear what he said to Dad, but he sounded way less friendly this time.

When the phone rang, I scrambled to answer it.

“Hey man, where you been? Thought you were coming over for band practice.”

“I can’t talk now,” I hissed to Stevie.

“Seriously?”

“I got the flu.”

“Yeah, right. The flu again.” He paused. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. “Do you want to come stay for a few days? I know my mom and dad wouldn’t mind.”

“Sorry, man. Not now. I’ll call when I feel better, I guess,” I babbled, shoving the phone in its cradle with a crash, and yanking the cable back out of the wall again for good measure. I never could fool Stevie. He knew me too well. It’d been the same way last year, when Dad had been suspended from work. I’d gotten a job myself to help out with the overdue bills, stocking shelves at nights at the Star Market, and what with that and Dad’s wild spells, I didn’t get a wink of sleep in a month. I’d felt so exhausted all the time that I called in sick to school. They bought it right away; probably they were glad I wasn’t there to bug them.

Stevie wasn’t buying it for a second, though.

Came over every day until I ended up agreeing to go home with him, just to get him off my case and out of Dad’s way. Stevie’s folks had let me stay with them almost two whole weeks “to give your Dad a break,” but when I went back home, Dad looked like he hadn’t eaten a bite of food or slept a solid hour the whole time I’d been gone. It would have been great to have stayed at Stevie’s place, but Dad needed me.

I did my best to stay out of his way for the rest of the day. My room was the only calm place in the house, but even in the orderly oasis of my room, I couldn’t shake the hot, itchy panic that settled over me every time I tried to chill. Dad sometimes ragged me for keeping my room neat the way I did, but it didn’t make me a sissy for liking things neat, surely? Army guys kept their kit in good order, and they were the toughest guys around.

I lay on my bed, listening to Dad thunder around the house, like a lightning storm that had flown through the window and gotten trapped indoors. I let myself daydream about me and Stevie leaving town and starting a band, just like we’d always bullshitted about. Playing in big cities and getting girls and seeing the world, but thinking that way made me feel guilty.

My Dad gave up everything for me, and I couldn’t even look after him when he was low? I knew that the mean reds would lift eventually.

Gracie

shoved open the door of Beantown Scoops, still trying to push back the tears welling up behind my eyelids. I wasn’t even hungry anymore, but the last place I wanted to be was home. The kid across the street, Erin, called Beantown Scoops the booger store, because she swore that one day there’d been a booger on top of her raspberry ripple. But, new people owned it now, and it was always packed with folks from the neighborhood.

The line stretched all the way back to the door, and the girls behind the counter scowled as they ran back and forth, getting in each other’s way as they tried to keep up with the orders. Neither of them went to my school. I wondered if they looked like the types to put a booger in your cone, but I didn’t see how either of them would have had time.

The frappe machine roared, making my head pound harder. The two little girls in front of me shrieked and giggled over some secret joke and slapped sticky handprints onto the freezer case so you could hardly read which flavor was which. Me and Katie had been like them once. I wondered if they’d still be friends when they were my age. Would one of them grow up to be the swan, and one the big ugly duckling?

“What they doing? Churning the damn milk themselves?” grumbled the old guy behind me. That would probably be me pretty soon—talking out loud to no one in particular, just to feel like someone was listening.

When it was finally my turn, I ordered a Mocha Chip. As cold as it was beneath the blast of the air conditioning, the cone was already melting by the time I’d fumbled my change back into my pocket. I stooped to take a lick, pushing my way out of the store into the wall of summer heat. The door of the ice-cream store swung shut behind me, producing a jolly jingle-bell clatter.

Now that I had my cone, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to wander the neighborhood and risk running in to Katie and the guys, but I didn’t want to go home and sit in that big empty house by myself, either.

As I stood trying to make my mind up where to go, a breeze stirred up around my ankles. Down the block, a pair of trees began to nod back and forth, dry leaves rustling. The colorful flag hanging out front of the store fluttered and snapped, softly at first, then harder, nearly whacking me across the back of my head. The wind snatched the Red Sox cap off one of the kids lounging on the bench and spun it down the road as his friends jeered.

“We expecting a storm?” the little old man who’d grumbled in the line said from behind me. He had his ice-cream cone clutched carefully in one hand, and a folded newspaper in the other, which the rising wind was now snatching at like it wanted to rip it to confetti.

There’d been no storm clouds when I’d walked to the ice cream shop, no breeze whatsoever, but as they always say in New England, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” I guessed I was going home after all. I kind of liked the big summer thunderstorms. The house would feel cozy instead of empty. I could watch the black clouds roll in from the attic window, and picture Katie and her dumb friends getting caught in the storm.

“Whoa!” The colorful flag ripped free of its moorings and sailed off down the road. Clouds moved like molasses across the sun, and the difference between the soupy summer heat and the chill of sudden shadow made me shiver. Candy wrappers and leaves skittered past my legs, stinging my ankles, and the chalkboard with the week’s special flavors written on it fell over with a
bang
.

I turned to go, but before I made it three steps, a flock of napkins fluttered up off one of the little cast iron tables, right into my face.

“Whoops, sorry.” The woman sitting there made a grab for them, her oversized sunglasses flashing my own reflection back at me.

“So much for ice-cream, huh?”

She had a little white dog on a leash and as the wind blew harder, the pup started to yip and whimper.

“Hush up, Tootsie,” she scolded.

Other dogs barked too, howling in backyards all around the neighborhood. The sound made me uneasy, like cold fingers trailed up and down my spine. I’d heard of dogs barking all together before an earthquake, but not because of a bit of wind.

“Tootsie!” The little dog flashed past me, claws skittering on the pavement, tail tucked between its legs, its leash flying out behind it. The woman’s chair toppled to the ground as she ran after her dog. She scooped Tootsie up just before it ran into the busy traffic of Comm Ave. The little dog struggled and snarled in her arms. “Tootsie, what the hell!”

The wind threw my hair into my face, so I pushed it back and squinted at the sky, expecting to see a bank of summer thunderheads rolling in, but.…

I swallowed. My knees became weak.

Above me, the Silver Ships were
moving
. Four of them gathered far above us, like sharks circling their prey. Their vast silver bellies flashed in the sunlight. They hung there for a minute, and then, all at once, they plummeted. My breath caught in my throat like my lungs had shrunk to nothing. I wanted to scream out a warning, but my mouth flapped helplessly.

I’m dreaming. I fell asleep on the porch after all, and now I’m going to wake up
. At first, the ships made no noise at all, then a terrible high-pitched screaming, that made all the hair on my arms stand up—something I’d always thought only happened in stories.

I was screaming, too, but my voice was lost in the roar of the ships. My hair whipped into my mouth and I spat it out, choking. A car alarm began bleating to my left, and then that too was swallowed by the noise of otherworldly engines shifting up to killing speed. The storm had begun a hurricane and the thunderous din made my brain rattle in my skull. I wanted to run, but my legs felt like two strips of rubber. All I could do was stand frozen to the spot as the wind shoved me back and forth, my eyes streaming from the downdraft.

The silvery hull of the nearest ship grew and grew until the blue summer sky vanished behind the monstrous hulk, and still it kept coming. The summer day had grown dark as twilight, and the pavement beneath my scuffed sneakers shivered.

Someone hit my shoulder, almost knocking me off my feet. People poured out of the store, their eyes wide, their mouths shaping screams I couldn’t hear. One of the shop girls ran smack into the old guy, sending him flying to the ground. She didn’t stop to help him up, just trampled over him like he wasn’t there.

Across the street, the window of the Italian Place shattered into glittering shards, the noise lost in the maelstrom.

The wind shoved me again, stronger than before, a hot wind, with a weird smell like burnt sugar that made me gag. I stumbled, and just like that, whatever spell had frozen my feet in place seemed to be broken. I ran, half-blinded by my tangled hair, and half-mad from the crushing wall of sound and terror. I skirted a dogwood tree that had been ripped from the earth, black roots clawing at the sky like frantic hands. A pair of cop cars flew by me through the junction, the flashing lights sending me momentarily blind.
Don’t look up, don’t look up
, I told myself frantically. My sneakers crunched and slid on broken glass, my chest felt like it was stuffed with cotton. The world appeared in snatches of color and sound through the silvery scrim of pure panic that had muffled my senses.