The Hurricane

for a tree or anything leaning against the wall. Seeing nothing, he ran back to the living room and up the first few steps toward the second floor, shining his light well ahead of him.

The storm sounded twice as fierce upstairs. It sounded like the roof was off. The howl and whistle were completely unabated, like Daniel would walk up the next few steps and find naked clouds roiling above, leaves blowing through, just a few bits of low wall standing around him.

He took each step cautiously and reminded himself that it would be raining on him and the carpet would be soaked if the roof were actually gone. Once his head was higher than the second floor, he rotated his light around through the pickets of the railing, just to be sure. All the walls were there. Daniel kicked himself for being so stupid and afraid. He ran up the last handful of steps and went straight for his room. Throwing the door open, he first grabbed his book bag, which had his books, schoolwork, and a few comics in it. He slung both straps on and moved to the window.

Daniel peered outside. He could see a second cone of light shining out below where Carlton was scanning the back yard from the kitchen window. If the front yard looked like a war in progress, the back looked like the aftermath. One of the really big trees was down. The sight of such a large cylinder of wood lying flat through the back yard was jarring. Limbs stood up from it like smaller trees sprouting vertically from its bark. These were whipping around like the pom-poms fans shake at the high school football games. As Daniel cracked the window, he saw bits of bark and pine needles, along with the usual leaves, stuck to the outer glass. The air shrieked as he let some in, and the door to his room slammed shut with a loud bang.

Daniel flinched and felt goose bumps run up his arms. He turned around and shoved his bed away from the window to keep it from getting wet. Then he ran around and gathered up the clothes on the floor and threw them on top of the bed. Something scampered across the roof—or a limb tumbled across it—but it sounded like it was right on the other side of the sheetrock above his head.

“This is fucking nuts,” Daniel said to himself. He felt a rush of adrenaline from all the pounding and creaking. As the upper story swayed, the image of being on a ship during a storm was complete. He opened his door, feeling the wind yanking against him. He slid his dresser down the wall as he held the door all the way open, pinning its edge behind the furniture. He then ran to Hunter’s room and cracked a window there. He wondered what Hunter was going through across town. He always seemed to get out of doing stuff with the rest of the family. Zola’s room came last. As Daniel approached her door, he thought he heard squishing from the carpet beneath his feet. He was still processing this when he opened the door and stepped inside—

Something bushed across his face; Daniel screamed and dropped his flashlight. He waved in the air to shoo whatever it was off, and his hands tangled in twigs and leaves. He bent for his flashlight, the spray of rain pelting him. The thunderous roar of the wind was so thick, it drowned out his thoughts. He felt like he’d stepped outside, or through some dimensional rift from his comics and into a hellish, infernal plane of existence.

He shined his light inside as the door banged against his foot. Something ran across the floor and disappeared into the darkness. Splintered two-by-fours hung from the busted-open flesh of cracked and hanging sheetrock. Zola’s ceiling fan was on the floor, glass shades and shattered light bulbs glittering—he aimed the flashlight up—there was a tree trunk angled through her dormer, a thick limb splitting her bed in two. Another squirrel ran past, twittering and complaining. Now that he knew what they were, he placed the sound in the attic from earlier. The animals were moving from their downed home and into his.

“Holy shit,” someone said behind him.

Daniel startled and nearly fainted. He felt Carlton’s hand on his shoulder as his stepdad aimed his own light past and added it to Daniel’s.

“That’s the old oak out front,” Carlton said, more awe in his voice than fear. “We need to get downstairs.”

Daniel nodded his agreement. The two of them turned and hurried back toward the stairs, the wrath of the storm outside threatening to send another tree their way. The door to Zola’s room slammed shut as the wind swept through the house. He and Carlton thundered down the steps, their lights jouncing, their hands sliding along the railing, drowning out the scampering of smaller, no less frightened feet up in the attic.

13

“Dude, your room is toast.”

Daniel and Carlton squeezed back into the bathroom, which smelled sulfurous from freshly lit matches. Zola looked to Daniel, her face pinched in confusion.

“It was a pretty good sized tree,” Carlton told their mom.

“What do you mean toast?” Zola asked.

“You’d be dead right now,” Daniel said. He didn’t say it to torment, more out of shock and awe and from his pounding heart.

“Dead?” Zola howled.

“Daniel, don’t do that to your sister.”

“There’re squirrels everywhere.”

“Mom!”

“Daniel Stillman!”

“Everyone calm down,” Carlton said. He turned off his flashlight and set it on the counter. Daniel’s mom was sitting on the edge of the tub; his sister knelt on the floor amid a tangle of pillows and blankets. Her eyes were wide and fixed on Carlton.

“What happened?” she asked.

Carlton lit another candle. “A tree fell into the house,” he said. He looked to their mother. “It went through the dormer in Zola’s room, but it looks like—”

“There’re squirrels in my room?” Zola howled.

Carlton showed her his palms. “Everything’s gonna be okay,” he said, but Daniel knew he was just placating her. There was no way to know if everything was going to be okay. How did they know where the storm was exactly? It could still be miles away. The eye wall could be barreling right for them.

“My Zune,” he said, shrugging off his backpack and setting it down on the floor.

“Is the house okay?” his mom asked.

“It’s holding up the tree, but I’d say the worst of the impact is long over.” Carlton paused. “The damage from the rain isn’t going to be good.”

“The insurance is up to date. I remember writing that check just a few weeks ago. This wouldn’t qualify as flood damage would it?”

“I don’t think so,” Carlton said. “I’m not sure.”

Daniel dug in his bag for his Zune. It was yet another humiliation in his life. All his friends had iPods, and every connector to everything in the universe seemed to be designed for Apple’s ubiquitous device. His aunt’s car even had an iPod dock, even though she didn’t own one. She had bought him the Zune for Christmas, then asked him to plug it into her car and play some of his favorite music. Daniel had to weasel his way out of telling her she’d bought the wrong thing and had done his best to sound grateful for the gift. He didn’t even like pulling it out in public and had bought some white earbuds so it would look like an iPod if he kept it in his pocket.

But it did have an FM tuner, something many of the iPods didn’t. Daniel had never used it before. He powered it up while Zola begged Carlton for more details about her room. Their mom had to tell her that she was most definitely not going up there to see for herself.

“Does anyone know any FM stations?” Daniel asked. He couldn’t personally name a single one. The rare times he listened to music in the car, he just tapped the search button from one commercial to the next until he found an actual tune.

“NPR is ninety five point seven,” Carlton said. “I think one of the AM stations has a duplicate signal on the FM range somewhere.”

Daniel struggled to figure out how to adjust the frequency. If it was an iPod, he thought to himself, it would be intuitive.