Hurricane Kiss (3 page)

Chapter 4

JILLIAN

I stare at River's profile as he gazes out the window. Jaw set stoically, with steely resolve. I can't help thinking about how much he's changed in less than a year.

It had to have been football. Something to do with the demands of the game. He probably slept no more than four hours a night back when he was on the team. That was enough to make anyone crazy. Then there were the pressures of school and the need to keep your grades up to stay on the team, as well as for college apps the following year.

He had no mom to cook or care for him, just a woman who cleaned once a week and then drove off. And every day he was pushed by a coach who had only one thing on his mind—victory for the team. Failure wasn't an option. It reflected badly on the coach; it would mean that he failed. And Coach Briggs didn't do failure.

Did he push River too far? Everybody has a breaking point. I heard rumors about drugs, about punishments, like making the players run extra miles when they screwed up.

What happened to him? What did he do? Did he snap? Why hadn't the story come out?

What scared me most was when someone whose dad was a cop said that Briggs had an order of protection against River.

That meant he was a real threat. It meant he was violent.

RIVER

The big guns are here with us. Doom on the horizon? I can thank my dad for moving us to Texas. For uprooting me from the best high school in LA, opening the way for all the shit that rained down on my head.

I shift in my seat, jammed in, a cooler hogging most of the space by my feet. I kick it away and try to stretch, but end up smacking the roof of the car.

“Take it easy,” my dad says, staring ahead.

“If I could friggin' move here, I would.”

As usual, the world is closing in on me. On the radio someone is interviewing the head of the animal shelter.

“For category 3 storms and above we evacuate the shelters,” he says. “Air-conditioned trucks are already in transit, taking our dogs and cats to shelters in Dallas and Austin where they'll be safe.”

Trapped. I picture them caged up in the vans, imprisoned. Scared, homeless, not knowing where they're going or why. No one to comfort them.

The memories flood back. I was staring out the window one day at the center and saw a stray dog amble by, his head down, desperately hunting for food. I wanted to call it over, to comfort it, but why give it hope? If one of the guards heard me, he'd probably shoot it just for spite and then laugh about it. Nothing was sacred there. Nothing and no one.

Briggs could have worked there—he was just like them. He didn't give a shit about anyone or anything. Except maybe his canary, which I never quite got.

I always loved dogs. I begged for one when I was a kid. Big, small, brown, black, white, anything, I didn't care what it looked like. I didn't care if it had four legs or two eyes; I just wanted a dog of my own. Silent, loving, devoted, all mine. There were so many of them just abandoned, locked in crappy cages, depressed, desperate for human contact. I wanted to help. I wanted to take one home and give it a real home.

I begged my dad over and over for a dog. We had a house with ten rooms and a backyard. But all he saw was a chance to lecture me about responsibility.

“Who's going to walk it when you're in school? Or keep it company, or take it to the vet when it gets sick? Your mom and I work.”

The love part got lost somewhere in his rant. What did I end up with? A stuffed one from Toys “R” Us. Seriously. It was worse than nothing.

It's still bright out, but there's a breeze now. Entropy. That was a vocab word when I had English. It has to do with randomness, something like that, so it seems to fit now. What's illogical sounds more logical when there's an actual word to nail it down.

Entropy also sums up my random life and how I'm powerless to change it. What if I hadn't met Briggs? What if I hadn't been thrown out of school? What would the rest of my life look like? Now I was sidelined, permanently. No cheering for me, ever again. Nothing I did would make a difference. I stick my head out the window just to get air, even though it's roasting out.

The only thing you can do is change how you feel about things so they don't affect you in the same way.
Not my words. Dr. Carter, the shrink my dad wasted $200 an hour on twice a week to try to reprogram my head when I got out, so I'd go back to semi-fucked from totally fucked. Talk therapy, endless talk therapy.

Too bad it didn't work.

Reprogram my feelings about Briggs and football? Not quite. The insanity of everything that happened still makes my head spin. It started in LA when I went to tryouts on a whim after school one day when I had nothing else going.

I stare out at the military trucks. Guys, just like me, standing around, looking lost.

I hadn't played football before, unless you counted the schoolyard with my dad and some friends. I was into skateboarding, swimming, snowboarding, high-speed stuff, defying the odds, making fast decisions. But I was open to something new. Maybe it was all about a secret wish to split my head open. Or more likely nail the cheerleaders. Who knows?

Without much effort I became their MVP. I remember the write-up:
At spring practice six major college coaches came from different parts of the country to watch Daughtry play.

They talked about scholarships, cars, apartments, and the big leagues. They laughed about parties and girls. It felt unreal. My strength, the stunning pinpoint spirals I threw to my receivers. There was one word everyone kept using: potential.

They saw something in me that they didn't see in other guys.

They were actually serious.

When we moved from LA to Houston, I thought it would die down. I remember talking to my friend Adam online.

“Looking forward to anonymity. Need time to just screw up, party, whatever.” I thought maybe I'd finally take more time and study acting. If there was anything that was the opposite of football for me, it was acting, and the world of living inside other people's heads. My mom was an actress before she got married, and she always encouraged me to read plays and go out for drama.

But the high school coaches around the country have some kind of old-boy network, and before I knew it Briggs had my number. I thought about turning him down, but my dad said I was crazy. Then he dangled an incentive in front of me.

“Go out for football, and I'll buy you a Harley.”

I didn't think I'd heard right. “You kidding me?”

“I'm dead serious.”

So I said screw it and spoke to Briggs.

That was my biggest mistake.

Chapter 5

15 HOURS TO LANDFALL

JILLIAN

I wake up in a sweat. I must have nodded off. The trucks, they're still there, stuck, stranded, like us. It's been less than an hour if my watch hasn't stopped. I stare out the window.

“We hardly moved in an hour?” It just comes out.

“Welcome to your highway burial plot,” River says.

“Don't say that!” Why is he like that?

“Hey!” Harlan says, tapping the inside of his wrist on the steering wheel repeatedly. “This mission was badly planned. That's the problem. That is exactly the problem.”

He's trapped too. Why didn't I shut up?

“The mayor screwed up. If they had evacuated us neighborhood by neighborhood, this never would have happened,” Harlan says. “It would have been organized, traffic would have flowed. We wouldn't be sitting …”

“Things got worse so fast it—” I say.

“No excuse,” he says. “You have drills, you prepare, and you don't let yourself be caught short.”

“News flash, the world isn't perfect,” River says, a muscle in his jaw pulsing.

I had thought he was lost in his music.

I stare at the soldiers on the side of the road, leaning against the trucks smoking, eyes darting back and forth. Some of them look my age.

“What are they there for?” I can't help myself.

“Water, rations, emergency care, it's not clear,” Harlan says.

If we get caught in it, out here in the open? My heart starts to misfire. There's no way they can have enough supplies for everyone. Is it all for show? Like the government's trying to do something or look good? What would my mom say? I start to call her and then stop. What difference will it make? Anyway, she's busy. Too busy to talk to me now.

Out of nowhere I think of my dad, wherever he is in the world. Is he watching TV now like the rest of the country probably is? Does he think about all of us and realize where we are? He has to know that we're at the center of this. Does he feel guilty? Indifferent? Or is he in total denial? And what if he were here? What if I still had a dad? Would he be with me, or would he be out covering the story too, leaving me exactly where I am now, on my own to fend for myself?

I hate myself for still thinking of him. He doesn't even deserve that, but I can't stop. I don't deny I share his DNA. You can't pretend that doesn't exist. But the sad part is that, after all this time, I can't get beyond the pain.

I used to think it was my fault and him leaving was my punishment. I didn't listen. I was always starting fights with Ethan, with him, even with my mom, because I always wanted my own way. If I behaved better and never fought, maybe my dad would have stayed. I asked Ethan once what he thought.

“Do you think he left because of all the fights? Was it my fault?”

“Right,” he said, looking at me like I was crazy. He took the book he was reading and threw it hard across the room. Then he walked out, slamming the door.

All around us, people are getting out of their cars. They're all feeling trapped too. We're together in this, we're all stuck on the highway, but really we're all feeling more alone than ever. Everyone trying not to think about the real issues. Like whether we'll survive. Whether we'll have homes to go back to if we do. Whether life will ever be the same again.

In the meantime, everyone is acting cool. People stand up and eat sandwiches, drain soda cans, change diapers on backseats, or do jobs to keep busy like pouring melted ice from their coolers, cleaning windshields, or shaking out floor mats, pretending they're being productive and moving forward with their lives. But it's all pretend, like I used to say when I was little.

My world creeps to a halt. The universe is a giant still life with touches of indistinct movement around the perimeter. The earth has stopped rotating. I am an alien watching a movie about terrestrials trying to exit the planet in the face of a giant meteorite.

Yes, I am going batshit crazy. The blistering heat is frying my brain.

Harlan stops the car. I get out and talk to the guy in the next car because it means doing something rather than nothing. “Do you have any idea what the holdup is?”

“I don't know,” he says. “Maybe just too many people.” That doesn't exactly help.

I go up to the car in front of him. “Have you heard anything about what's tying everything up?”

“I heard that a tractor-trailer truck broke down a mile up,” he says. “But I doubt that's the problem.” He shrugs. “Could just be volume.”

So much for fact-finding. I get back inside.

River groans. “Why are you bothering?”

“There has to be some reason for this. It doesn't make sense.”

“Make sense? What makes sense?”

I reach for my diary.

The world is divided into two kinds of people—those who are insecure and live twisted up in their fantasies, and everyone else. No doubt where I belong, watching everyone else from a safe distance in my head.

And River? He's a ticking bomb.

Traffic ahead of us moves suddenly. We shift from failure to success and edge forward. Doors slam all around us as people get back into their cars, fists of triumph in the air.

The soldiers crush out their cigarettes and disappear into the fronts and backs of the trucks. Wheels start to turn. I look at the dark canvas covers. What's shrouded beneath them?

With no explanation, traffic stays in motion. The air pressure seems to lighten as the outside streams past the windows. We're all silent, afraid to jinx it. Harlan presses buttons and the windows rise.

“OK,” he says, his expression relaxing.

The AC kicks in, drying my face, the chilled air as welcome as rainbow ices on a summer afternoon.
Yes!
I want to yell out. Chalk one up for us against Mother Nature.

Success,
I text Kelly.
Moving finally!


Us 2. Yay!


Race u 2 Austin.


It will be fun to be with my mom's friend Linda again. She was a book reviewer before she switched to teaching. She has four Siamese cats and a pug named Waldo. Wherever you sit, the whole group wanders over and snuggles with you. At this rate, we should be there in two and a half hours.

I look at the sky for confirmation that my prayers have been answered, only it's as gray as a concrete gravestone, like the heavens don't give a crap about sending out uplifting messages.

River stretches, momentarily locking his arms around the headrest behind him. I can't not notice his biceps and the swell of his shoulders. I exhale. It comes out louder than I intended.

I thought those feelings were part of the past. Whatever. It doesn't matter. He couldn't care less. He presses his head against the seat. I'm off his radar screen, an extra piece of baggage taking up space in the backseat, Miss Ho-Hum Next-Door Neighbor, a nonentity of epic proportions.

I stare at the hands on my watch, fixating on the second hand. One minute. Two. Three. It seems to be in slow motion. I glance at the odometer. When I look again, we've gone just over two more miles. How is that possible? We slow to a crawl and stop—again.

There's nothing up ahead to explain this, downshifting from success to failure. Five minutes. Ten. Harlan kills the AC. He lowers the windows, and the toxic heat flows in. I stare at his watch, the sun bouncing off the gold, dancing like a tiny Tinkerbell on the perimeter.

Text from Kelly:
Now?


Stuck again. Can't believe.


Wanna go home!
she says.
WHAAA.


There's a little boy in the car in the next lane. He leans out his open car door and throws up. His mom jumps out of the passenger seat and puts her hands on his shoulders, holding him. He heaves again and again and finally crouches down at the side of the hot car, crying. She tries to comfort him, but it doesn't help. River watches, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, gnawing at the corner of his thumb.

Stop before you start bleeding
, I want to say. But I don't say anything. The sun shines faintly and then fades like it's on life support before retreating behind a veil of clouds.

No, please!

River raises his sunglasses and stares up at the sky. “Twenty-four to forty-eight hours before it hits?” he says, almost to himself.

I turn to the other window. “Omigod!”

A crazy face, just outside my window, staring in at me. He's got a long gray beard and one eye is entirely milk white.

“A great evil is about to befall you, sinners!” He yells at me. “An evil greater than the Holocaust. You are about to pay for your ways—for your immorality. God is watching us and hearing our lies and we—will—pay.”

“Move on,” Harlan yells, starting the engine and closing the windows.

But we're stuck.

The man stands there and stares through the window. At me. And then at River. I want to look away from his face—his awful, scab-covered face—but I can't.

RIVER

I watch the sick dude until he limps away to another car with his rant. Do I laugh or cry? We all sit in silence, freaked out.
Thanks, man
, I want to say,
but actually I'm more likely to die of boredom before the world ends.

Two guys on the road watch the sick guy and laugh. Then they start tossing a football back and forth over his head, which makes as much sense as anything. Back and forth, back and forth. I watch them, hypnotized by the ball.

Part of me doesn't give a shit anymore. I'm dead to the game.

Another part of me wants to run out of the car and grab it away from them, throwing it as far as I can until it smashes down hard and gets buried deep in the ground, an all-encompassing rage burning through me for the game and what it does to you and everyone who's part of it.

My first day Briggs summoned me to see him. I went into his office at three o'clock, but he was out. There was a blackboard with nothing on it except his name in chalk letters, a foot high:
coach briggs
.

But what caught my eye was the birdcage on the stand in the corner. A canary? I walked over to him and whistled. He stared back at me without moving his coal-black eyes. I figured Briggs probably forgot about the appointment. I turned, ready to leave, when a booming voice came from the corridor: “River Daughtry.”

I spun around, almost erupting in nervous laughter. He reminded me of a priest trying to impress a new choirboy with his godliness. He walked to the front of the room. Tall—six five maybe—with the bulk of a wrestler, jeans held up by a leather belt with a buckle as wide as a rearview mirror.

I waited, my name hanging in the air between us. I felt uneasy, not sure why.

“Sit,” he said.

He stared at me from the other side of the desk, as though by peering into my head my life would open up to him. I looked back at him directly, not caring if he took the stare down like a dog that thinks it's being challenged.

“Sir.”

“Welcome,” he said finally. “We're glad to have you here. We'll send you for a physical—I have no doubt you'll pass it—then you can join the team. Coach Benson was very sorry to lose you.” He grabbed the football on his desk like a kid needing a security blanket, touching it as if he were comforted by the feel of the grain. He held it like he earned it. I looked at it and then back at his face, pock-marked like thirty years earlier acne had hit him hard.

“Coach Benson was a great—”

“—His loss is our gain,” he said, drowning me out. I sat in silence after that while he spouted off about the team and how I could get them to first place because I had “the stuff.”

The stuff?

“You know what the three D's are?”

“No, sir,” I said. Sir. That's how guys actually spoke here.

“Diligence, devotion, and dedication,'” he said, dead serious. “Your team is your family. You live with us, you breathe with us, you practice with us, and you give us your all. I demand one hundred percent of you.” He stared at me with a paralyzing look, and I stared back. I figured he had to be totally out of his mind.

So I made the team.

And down the line came Lexie Blake. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with her.