Hurricane Kiss (2 page)

But not my dad. He was gutting the place, packing work stuff, tax returns, food for a year, whatever. I snap on the car radio.

“We're doing what's humanly possible to protect the citizens of this city. We can't predict how directly we'll be hit, but we do know the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, with eighteen hundred people killed, two hundred seventy-five thousand homes destroyed in Louisiana, and another sixty-five thousand in Mississippi and Alabama, leaving a great swath of humanity with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.”

“Mr. Mayor, many consider Katrina a once-in-a-lifetime storm, insisting that it will never happen again in our lifetime. Are you overreacting by calling for an evacuation for Hurricane Danielle?”

“Not at all, John—”

I stab the button.

What do I remember most about Katrina? A single statistic: the destruction left behind could fill four hundred football fields, each fifty-feet high with debris. I flash back to my mom. How would she be taking this if she were here? Even if she were scared, she wouldn't show it. She had a way of making bad look good, or at least OK. For my sake.

“River,” my dad yells. “Go see if Jillian's ready. We have to get moving.”

Shit. I get out of the damn car and go up to her front door. It's open. I walk in and head for the kitchen, then
smack
, we slam into each other as she turns the corner.

“Ow! God, River!”

“Jesus, sorry!” I back off abruptly, feeling like an asshole. My heart amps up. After all this time … her scent … “We need to get going—
now
,” I say, clenching my fists. “It's getting late.”

“I'm ready, I'm ready, OK,” she says, her eyes flashing.

I storm out the door and climb back into the car, blasting the music. On the road together for three hours, then we'll part ways. If all goes as planned.

JILLIAN

I try to catch my breath, unsteady on my feet. What just happened? It was so long ago … How could I still feel …

I lean back against the wall, thinking back to how it all started—his first day at school, sophomore year, just over a year ago.

The first thing I found out about River was that his wrists were bound with barbed wire. A strong arm reached out in front of me one morning, gallantly propping open the front door of the school. That didn't happen much during the morning rush. I glanced back to ID the white knight with the barbed-wire tattoos. That's when I found out the second thing about him.

He had wintergreen eyes.

I didn't know his name back then. All I knew was that he was my new next-door neighbor and that this was the first time I'd seen him at school. I also knew he didn't know yet that I lived next door. Don't ask me why, but that made me feel as though I held this power over him.

“Happen to know where the office is?” he asked me in a breathless whisper. I glanced down at the mirrored aviators dangling from the neck of his black T-shirt, sunlight flickering off them hypnotically.

“Yes.”

A crooked grin lit up his face. “OK then, twenty questions?”

“I'll spare you,” I said, rising to the coolness challenge. “Straight ahead, then left after the display case with the trophies.”

He saluted with two fingers and then leaned closer. “My first day,” he whispered, grazing my ear with his lips. He sauntered off and I stood there watching him until,
whomp!
I got slammed by a backpack as someone pushed past me in the doorway. I looked at my watch. Why was I standing there? I was late for class.

First days were a bummer. To make it worse, from first glance you got pegged as hot or not. Not that River had to worry.

When I saw him a day later, he didn't see me. He was leaving the cafeteria line with enough spaghetti and meatballs to end world hunger.

“Whoa, hello!” said Sari Nelson, spotting River from our lunch table. “But he knows he's something. Just look at the way he walks; you can always tell.”

“Give him a break,” I said. “He just—”

“—made football,” Kelly said.

“How do you know?” Sari asked.

“Bethany heard the coach talking to one of his teachers,” Kelly said. “He was this megastar quarterback and the MVP at his last school in LA, and they hated to lose him, but after his mom died his dad asked for a transfer.”

“You know more than I do,” I said, “and he's my next-door neighbor.”

Silence.

“Why didn't you tell us, Jillian?” Sari asked.

“There's nothing to tell. A moving van was parked in front of the house next door one day, and then I saw him and his dad helping the guys carry in cartons.”

Kelly nudged me. “Have you spoken to him? What's he like?”

I shook my head. “My mom went over to say hi. I never see him at home, so he must start first period and go to practice after school.”

“Here's the game plan,” Kelly said. “Bake him fudge brownies. You'll be the one-girl welcome wagon. Then we can invite him to party.”

“Right.”

“I mean it, he would just think you're being nice.”

“They'd probably come out half-raw, and I'd poison him with salmonella,” I said. “Maybe buy?”

“So bring him a keg,” Sari said, “and invite us over.”

“And get him thrown off the team before he even starts? Coach Briggs would wring my neck,” I said. “Any other brilliant ideas?”

“You're the editor of the paper, Jillian, you're always digging up answers. Come up with something,” Kelly said.

But I didn't have to, at least right then. The bell rang and we all got up to go. River went out the side door toward the football field, munching an apple. No wonder I didn't see him much. The team practiced six days a week. Football isn't a sport in Texas; it's a religion. The highest calling. If River could carry the team to the top, he was made for life.

All he had to do was show up. And play the game.

Chapter 3

20 HOURS TO LANDFALL

RIVER

I stare at our house. Will it withstand a beating? It looks solid, but who knows? Like an athlete, pinned down and unable to fight back.

“Let me see you fight now, hotshot. Well? C'mon!”
He punches me again and again. This is my entrance exam. Fight back and get crippled, or take it.

“No more fight in you?”
The warden spits in my face and walks away.
“I think you're learning.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to erase every second of the three months I was locked up in that pit like an animal. I go back to the beginning, the innocent time, our first few weeks of living in Houston.

A lifetime ago.

Her mom invited us over for a barbecue. We accepted, but it felt strange doing the new neighbor thing. When we got there my dad went outside and had a drink with her mom.

“Jillian's in the kitchen,” her mom said. “Maybe you can help her.” She pointed the way.

She was making deviled eggs, whipping each egg yolk with mayo, like it mattered to her to do it right. I couldn't just sit there watching, so I offered to peel some eggs—only I ended up messing up the whites and getting shell everywhere, so instead I carried stuff out to the backyard and managed not to drop anything.

I wanted to grab a beer from the fridge to relax. When everything was ready, we finally did sneak out a beer and shared it. That helped. Then we shared a second one. It made her giddy, which was contagious. After dinner we went out to the pool. They had a waterslide. It felt like we were ten-year-olds, going belly up and then closing our eyes, trying to land inside some rubber inner tubes. After that she challenged me to Ping-Pong.

“You are so going to lose,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

I did. First on purpose, but she was on to me.

“You let me,” she said, annoyed. “Don't do that.” I laughed and played harder the next game. She didn't need a handicap. I still lost. That didn't happen much.

I was ready to play more games with her. Any kind.

She was easy to talk to; she listened. She asked me all kinds of questions about LA, like she wanted to know everything about it, like she really cared. She knew how weird it felt to leave all your friends behind and start over, at the same time liking the idea of landing in a new place with no baggage. Life didn't give you many chances to start over.

“You can be anyone you want to be in a new place,” she said. “At least for a while.”

I didn't tell her about my mom or why we moved, but somehow I think she knew. I didn't see a dad around. I figured we both got shortchanged when it came to parents. It had to be hard for her; it always was, no matter what happened.

Sure I was drawn to her. She was real, no pretenses. The red hair spilling over her shoulders definitely worked for me, and so did the intensity in those killer blue-violet eyes and the way they held mine when she talked. But more than that was her vulnerability. The crazy part was that she didn't seem to have a clue about how magnetic she was. That innocence and the way it crept up on you was hotter than anything.

Still, I pushed those thoughts aside. I was the new neighbor; she was being nice. That's how she was with people. Easygoing, natural. Real. Down to earth, unlike some girls.

But she was the girl next door, and only someone who was out of his mind would start up with a neighbor. Plus she had a boyfriend, and he made damn sure everyone knew it.

JILLIAN

I glance down at my phone. No text from Aidan. Hmm, not like him. I toss it into my bag. My backpack is jammed against my thigh, and there's a laundry-sized duffle next to it, so I'm air-bagged in place. I open my backpack and double-check everything. Money, ID, a toothbrush, aspirin, tissues, sunblock, and a few Xanax that I stole from my mom's medicine cabinet, in case I freak. I look at River. What are his essentials besides his phone and all of iTunes?

Harlan takes a pipe wrench from his garage and turns off the water valve in the street in front of the house. Then he shuts the gas. My mom runs out at the last minute.

“Safe trip,” she says to all of us, holding her hands out like the Pope offering a blessing. She leans through the window and kisses me on the cheek, stopping momentarily to study my face.

I roll my eyes. “Stop, I'll be
fine
.”

“Of course you will,” she says, putting up a brave front. “You'll be back before you know it.”

Who is she reassuring?

“Call me as soon as you get to Linda's. We'll have a celebration when all of this is over.”

“Whatever.”

Linda has been my mom's friend since kindergarten. She lives in a brick townhouse in Austin that she swears is hurricane-proof.

“No worries,” Harlan says, locking his seat belt. “We could live off what's in this car for a week if we had to.”

“I owe you,” she says, a tense smile on her face. “Phone charged?” she chirps for the millionth time as he backs out of the driveway.

I hate good-byes. Always have, always will. They're pathetically sad. There's so much that's unsaid. Unknown. And you know you shouldn't think those big, possibly terrible things that you're thinking, but you do anyway because you can't not, so the best thing to do is say good-bye fast and disappear.

No long portal good-byes
, my mom always says.

Her face is in full view one moment and then poof, it vanishes, and all I'm left with is a picture in my head.

I'm not a total baby. This isn't the first time I've left home. There was Washington, DC, for a week-long school trip. There was sleep-away camp in Massachusetts for eight weeks, the entire summer session. I was OK with it; I survived, not counting the first two nights in the bunk.

But this is different.

What if we get hit dead on? What if their worst predictions come true?

Will my mom survive? Will Ethan? Will I have a family to come back to? A home? When you're down to one parent …

Don't think about the unthinkable, someone said. I try that.

It'll be fine.
That will be my mantra.
It'll be fine.

Then I remind myself to breathe.

RIVER

Stuck in the passenger seat like dead weight, watching someone else drive. I hate that. Especially when it's my dad behind the wheel. He goes slower when I'm next to him, like he's doing a demo of how to drive. It makes me nuts. Is there a reason he is now doing thirty instead of the pathetic forty he could? To jump-start the trip, he takes the shortcuts, going on local roads. Traffic is lighter than normal.

“So far, so good,” he says. Right, tough navigation, sir, like he's kept the men under his watch alive on a jungle road with land mines.

“Looks like our timing was perfect,” Jillian says.

“Don't be so sure,” I say.

Not what I expected, at least so far. Did we manage to avoid the crowds? Everything looks the same, except the landscapers' flatbed trucks are gone now. No roar of lawn mowers or leaf blowers spewing gas fumes, keeping life all tidy. It's freaky calm.

I sit back. The pill has finally kicked in. The guy who invented these should get the Peace prize. I can breathe, for a while.

JILLIAN

Being in the backseat rewinds my head back to when I was six and Ethan and I had a dad. A dad who acted like one until the novelty wore off and he bailed because he was a total asshole. He and my mom would take us on road trips, and they'd dream up games to keep us from getting bored and fighting in the backseat.

“Take out your pens and write down the word, reincarnation, then tell me how many words you can make out of it.” Or, “I want each of you to watch the road and find a hundred red cars,” he'd say, dead serious.

We jumped at the bait. I'd sit there eyes fixed on the cars, determined to count every red one that passed, or meet another cosmic challenge like searching for license plates from every state. Ethan always tried to one-up me. I never believed it when he said he saw Alaska.

“Where?” I'd demand, and he'd laugh in my face.

“You didn't see it? It passed already. You missed it! You're too slow!”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” I'd yell. But, deep down, I did believe him. He was my older brother, and I looked up to him.

I'd never admit it, but I still do.

The games must have worked because I was consumed with listing all the license plates I saw in a spiral notebook, so I felt like a real reporter.

Now the only plates I see are from Texas and Oklahoma. People from everyplace else had the brains to stay away. I stare at an Oklahoma plate: a lone Native American with a bow and arrow, taking aim at the wide-open sky. Something about that. I have to look away.

We coast along smoothly, the tinted windows cutting the glare. Finally Harlan turns and pulls onto the 290 entrance ramp to Austin so we can avoid the traffic lights. Smooth sailing and then …

Endless gridlock.

The entire highway is nearly at a standstill, traffic stretching from here to the horizon. The next thing I expect to see is someone pulling out sleeping bags and setting up a tent.

“Jesus,” River says.

We stand still, inch forward every few seconds, and stop again.

“Is it the number of cars, or is something wrong up ahead?” I ask.

“Can't tell,” Harlan says.

“Is there anyplace to call for information?”

He shakes his head.

“Yeah, 911,” River says. “Tell them we are not cool with this. We want to be airlifted out.”

“You're a big help,” I say.

“Right.”

I try to Google the local news station and put in “traffic tie-up on 290,” but there's no report on what's holding things up. Then I go to the radio station. Still no news. There are helicopters flying above us. Why are there no traffic reports telling us what's causing this? Is anyone monitoring it? Are they even aware of what's happening?

No flashing lights or roadwork signs either. People are getting out of their cars and shrugging their shoulders, exchanging words with neighbors and trying to come to terms with the massive jam we're all part of. Half an hour, maybe more goes by and more people are outside their cars than in. A woman three cars ahead takes her miniature white poodle out of the car. She waits while he lifts his leg against the tire, and then puts him back inside.

“We'll be where she is in another hour,” River says.

“Great,” I say.

Harlan opens all the windows and cuts the engine. Sweat beads on my forehead. And no, lame brain me did not include zit cream in her
essentials
bag. Or whoa, not even Tampax, I now realize, and I'm not even sure when my period is due because I forgot my calendar, so genius me might as well throw herself out of the car and die now, saving Danielle the trouble.

I stare at the back of River's head. Not that he has to worry about zits or periods, and he can pee at the side of the road without searching for heavy cover. He rubs the back of his neck, and then maxes his music. I feel the vibrations inside me.

18 HOURS TO LANDFALL

RIVER

I put my headphones on and blast my brain with music, not that it changes anything.

I'm not roasting.

I didn't forget the second bottle of goddamn pills.

I'm not imprisoned in a packed car.

I'm not powerless to change anything, like a guy who got railroaded by a sick system of criminal
injustice
that puts your head in a vise and laughs when you scream from the pain.

Live inside your head instead of the real world
, the damn shrinks say.
Change your perceptions. Pretend.
Pretend.
Pretending something can actually make it happen
, they insist.
If you believe hard enough.
Believe? Hope? Those words aren't in my vocabulary anymore. What I go with now is reality. Cold, hard, reality: what's right smack in front of me.

I sit back as music fills my insides like a survival potion.