Hurricane

Josh has been struggling to keep his life under control for as long as he can remember. He finally cracks at the worst moment possible.

 

Hurricane

            My eyes fluttered open as I became conscious again. I looked around, trying to gain awareness of my surroundings. Then it flooded back. Memories. I uncurled myself from the position I was in. My legs and arms ached from the strain. The strain of holding myself in a protective ball all night long. Examining them, I winced at the visible cuts and bruises. Luckily, blood did not match the pain I could certainly feel. I sat, trying not to hurt myself further. I sat for a long while. That was when I began to hear something. It wasn’t anything scary. Not the sound of booming thunder, or who-knows-how-many-miles-an-hour winds. It was…a car? No, too loud for that. I crawled out from where I was and latched onto the wall where a window used to be. My eyes and ears searched for the sound as I looked past the destruction. I could see it. No wonder it was loud. Suddenly, I fell back on the floor. I could still see through the gaping window, but I all I could see was sky. Blue sky. Clear sky. Calm sky. Relief washed over me. It was over. All over. I began to shout.

 

“Three dollars?! Who pays three dollars for a watermelon?!”

            “Amy, just pay the girl and let’s GO.”

            “Oh, c’mon, Chris. Don’t be such a wuss. We can get her to lower the price.”

            “It’s three dollars!”

            “Exactly!”

            He turned to the woman standing behind the counter. “I’m sorry, my wife is CRAZY.” He aimed the last word towards Amy and spoke again. “She would find something wrong with this if you were PAYING her to take it. Which might just happen soon, because people tend to pay anything to get her to GO AWAY. I, for one haven’t found that price yet, but hopefully, someday I’ll reach it. But I do apologize for her nagging. At least you’re not married to her.”

            “Oh, please. Like you’re any better!” She began to imitate him. “Amy, why haven’t you made dinner? Amy, why are we out of beer? We’re always out of beer! Amy, why are my socks not in the right drawer? Amy, what did you do to the dog? Amy, why can’t the guys come over, ruin the house, make the place smell like a pigsty, and then on top of that, why can’t you clean it up BY YOURSELF, while I pretend to mow the lawn and talk to the neighbors?!”

            The lady behind the counter stepped back, frowning at the nasty fighting. Without a comeback, he spat out, “You know what? We don’t need a watermelon! This was your idea anyway. If you don’t want to pay THREE FREAKING DOLLARS, it is not my problem.”

            She opened her mouth to scream back, but he cut her off.

            “Just don’t keep asking IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TO STOP AND BUY WATERMELON THAT WE DON’T NEED AND WONT PAY FOR!!”

            They were both red in the face as they stared each other down.

            “You know, I think we’re gonna close early …” the lady said, pushing the window closed. “My lunch break is in…an hour and a half, anyway…”

 

 

            I sat in the back of car, with my head in my hands. I could hear it all through the barely muffling car windows. The fight went on and on until Dad got in the car.

            “We didn’t get any watermelon.” He spat.

            “Okay.”

            Mom got in and slammed the door. “Your father freaked out the woman at the stand.”

            “I did n-! You know what, I give up. I can’t even talk to you right now. Just shut up.”

            “Fine by me!”

            I just stared blankly out of the window, trying to control the anger building up. The tension in the car was unimaginable. I took a shot.

            “Are we still going to the beach?”

            “We don’t have any watermelon.” Dad said slowly, but harshly.

            “Are you obsessed with watermelon or what?” Mom snapped.

            “You said you wanted to go to the beach and eat watermelon. The point was the watermelon, but you ruined it, so NO! We’re not going to the beach. We’re going home.”

            “Oh, I ruined it, did I? I did?!”

            “I thought I told you to shut up.”

            “You’re so unreasonable! Everything is negative with you. Everything I do is wrong. Everything Josh says is wrong. Everything anyone and everyone ever thinks is wrong! Has anyone ever done something right, ever? How ‘bout Jesus, huh? Did he ever do anything right, or was he just a screw up, too?!”

            “I SAID SHUT UP!”

            I sunk into my seat, trying to block out the noise with thoughts of adulthood. Being free enough to leave and never return. Two more years. 692 days left.

       

            I sat on my bed, twisting and turning my rubix cube with no determined goal of completion. My books lay sprawled to the right of me, and my music was continuingly blasting. My room was really only a smaller version of the whole house. It would be what some would call messy, most would call the aftermath of a tornado, and what I would call…lived-in.

            The fan creaked at a slow pace. I kept twisting.

            Half an hour later, they were home. And they were drunk. It really wasn’t so bad at first. They were laughing. Too much, I will admit, but they were laughing. And it lasted, too. For a while. Then, they were fighting. Some nights they don’t fight. Most, they do. Tonight, they did.

            The sound elevated as they came upstairs. I could hear things smashing and breaking. A lamp, definitely a lamp. I would have to fix that later. Note to self. When they fell asleep. Or passed out. I would go out and pick up the glass so nobody would hurt themselves. That would start another fight.

            The sound got louder, and I could feel myself stressing more and more as they got closer to my room. I didn’t want to be in this. This was awful. And for the hundredth time, I grabbed my backpack and cell phone and slid my window open. A minute later, I was dropping on the ground outside and texting Brian.

            Hey, where you at, bro?

            7/11. Need to hang?

            He already knew something was up. That was Brian, I guess. I’d known him since the sixth grade, but I’d never known him as well as he knows me.

            Yeah, I need to relax awhile.

            See ya in a sec.

            I hopped on my bike and turned onto the main road. The wind blew through my hair as I sped up. It was refreshing. 10 minutes later, I stuck my bike in the old Janitor’s closet. Elmhurst. In my 8^th grade year at Elmhurst, there was a fire in the cafeteria. They told us more than 20% of the school had been burned down. I moved to Hathaway for the last four months. That was the last year anyone had at Elmhurst. Now, it just sat there, waiting for somebody to claim the land and tear it down. I hope they never do.

            I trudged up the steps in the theater, each of them painfully creaking with the weight. I cringe at each sound, even though there’s nobody around to catch me. Or so I thought.

            I stop all movement at the sound of footsteps.

            “Josh, that you?”

            “Oh, hey, Danny. How’d you get here so fast?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Did Brian text you?”

            “Naw, my phone’s at home.”

            “Oh, so what are you doing here?”

            “Just…hangin’.”

            We only ever come to the school when we needed to. Its where we go when we want to hang out, or get away. Mostly the latter.

            “What’s up?” I didn’t say it casually, and he knew it.

            “My parents are divorcing.”

            “Sucks, dude.”

            “Yeah,”

            I felt bad for him. I really did. Poor Danny had probably the best life of all my friends. He was a successful junior in high school, the best player on the lacrosse team, and he had really good grades. As jealous as I often was of his life, I could tell he was hurt. His life was on the edge of crumbling down around him.

            “You running, or just chillin’?”

            “I’m not gonna run away, man. They’ll get over it.”

            “Maybe.”

            “So what’re you doing here?”

            “Parents are at each other’s throats. I can’t handle it anymore.”

            Just then, Brian, Rich, and Austin showed. We said our greetings and sat down in our normal seats around the platform. If we looked down we could see the performing stage through the holes in the platform.

            Rich was the first to speak. “So, uh…I’m not gonna be around for awhile. We’re going on vacation.”

            “Again?” Austin rolled his eyes. “Dude, you go on vacation like it’s a trip to Walmart. What’s the excuse this time?”

            “Well, there’s a hurricane. We want to get out of the way.”

            “Dude, that ain’t a hurricane, it’s a rainstorm. In case you forgot, we live in Florida. It tends to rain here.” You could hear how bitter Austin was. He doesn’t have nearly as much money as Rich does. There’s a reason we call him Rich. His name is actually George, but seeing as his parents own a small company, Rich just fits him better.

            As Rich and Austin bantered, Brian leaned towards me and said, “Hey, you okay?”

            “Not really.”

            “Try not to do anything stupid, okay?”

            “I’m not stupid.”

            “No, you’re not. And I know that. But you might do something stupid. Just go home, try to cool down.”

            “I can do whatever I want, Brian.”

            “I just want you to be safe.”

            “Chill dude, I’m not gonna kill myself or nothing, I just wanna get away.”

            “What are you saying?”

            “I’m probably just gonna hang here for a while.”

            “So you’re running again?”

            “Look, you don’t get it! I can’t go home, and I can’t deal with them anymore. I don’t care if I’m running, or quitting, or whatever. I can deal with it one more day! And I certainly can’t take 692 more days!” I’m not even sure what exactly had made me snap, but I had, and I was done.

            The guys all looked at me with a look of shock, and one by one, they came up with excuses to leave, and I was left alone.

           

I spent probably a week and a half at Elmhurst before it hit. Maybe it was a little less, I can't remember exactly. About a week and a half of "borrowing" food from the local 7/11, going home to grab the essentials when I knew nobody was home, and thinking. A lot of thinking. I thought about how nice it would be to have a family like Rich's who have the money to just go on vacation whenever they please. I thought about how Brian was afraid I was going to try to hurt myself again. And a lot of the time, I thought of Danny. I thought of how his parents were splitting, and of how ugly the custody battle could get. Danny was a good kid, there's no doubt that each parent would fight for him. I also thought about my parents. There was a time, a while ago, when the fighting got really bad, and I was sure they'd divorce. How could a couple who fights so much stay together? And I always wondered, and still do, which parent I would choose to live with if they split. But now, I've begun to think that the better question is, which parent will take me?

     The guys never came by. They knew when I needed time, and I was really glad they knew it. Like I said, though. It was about a week and half before it hit. And it hit hard.

       

            I was asleep when it started to rain. I didn’t think anything of it, after all, I live in Florida. In the summer time around here, generally it rains every afternoon. There had actually been kind of a dry spell around here. We hadn’t gotten any rain in a couple days, so it was nice. I loved rain. It was refreshing, especially how it tended to drop the temperature so quickly. You were never hot in the rain. Waking up to the sound of thunder, I rub my eyes and sit up. It sounded like a good storm. I never like the storms that you aren’t sure whether it was raining or if you left the sink running. I wanted hard, pouring rain, that’s how I like my Florida storms. I walked down the steps over the theater and stepped out into the rain by one of the emergency exits. I was instantly soaked. Not that I cared much, I had a few extra sets of clothes that I had taken from the house while my parents were at work. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back so the rain would fall directly on my face. The problem was when I opened my eyes.

            “Holy crap.”

            Past the rain, was its source, a dark and ominous cloud that took over the sky completely. You could see where it was coming from and where it was going. And it was going fast, but there seemed to be no end to it. Not only was it moving, but it seemed to be moving in every direction. There was just something about it that seemed to scream danger. That was the first time a storm truly scared me. I felt like a child again, afraid of the big, scary clouds. Except that this time, I can assure you it was definitely big, and definitely scary.

            I ducked back into the theater and shut the door behind me, breathing heavily. I wasn’t even aware that I was breathing heavily until then. I spent probably an hour and a half just hoping that the storm would go away like they usually do. I paced some to calm down. It never went away. Actually, it just got worse. I could hear the trees swaying, the wind picking up, and debris being thrown around. Just like when my parents would fight, I could feel the stress building to breaking point. I began to panic when my shoes sloshed through water. Running to the exit, I realized I hadn’t made any mistake, and that I had shut the door completely.

            The school was flooding.

            I grabbed my stuff, ran outside and sprinted to my bike. All the rain, wind, and debris flying around made the run painful. It felt like I was being sandblasted, but it was actually water, water stinging all exposed skin on my body. Getting on my bike only made it worse. The rain came down harder, and it was more painful.

            For a while I was on autopilot. I didn’t even know where I was or where I was going until I found myself on Spring Hill Road. It wasn’t my road, either. It was Brian’s. I threw my bike down on his lawn and ran under the porch. I hoped this would provide some protection, but it didn’t. It might as well have been raining sideways. Banging on his door, I starting screaming Brian’s name in a panic. There was no answer.

            After a good five or ten minutes of knocking on the door, (I couldn’t really tell you how long I lasted, it felt like an hour to me), I gave up and fell back against the shut door. Shaking my head, I swore as I realized that their car wasn’t even there. Nobody was home.

            “Great, just great.”

            Danny’s house was just across the street, so I pulled my hood over my head, left my bike behind, and ran all out. And it was the same at his house. No car, and nobody home.

            “Still really great.”  I said sarcastically.

One by one, I went to the house of everybody I knew, even my own house. Normally, at this time of night, my parents would definitely be home. Even they were gone. And it’s not like they could have gone on vacation, either. Definitely not with their jobs.

            Obscenities fell from my mouth as I finally understood. Vacation. I remembered suddenly, Rich telling Austin that he was going on vacation to avoid a storm. Not just any storm either, but a hurricane. I was in a hurricane.

            Numb fingers grasped at the key I knew we kept on top of the shelf over the door. I fumbled with the doorknob and fell inside, almost losing my balance. My shoes sloshed across the floor, and I frowned, confused at first. There was about two inches of water flooding the first floor of the house. Swearing again, I trudged up the stairs, stripped off all of my wet clothes and put on dry ones. Collapsing onto my bed, I climbed under the sheets in fear and just stayed there, curled up into a fetal position.

I stayed there most of the night and eventually fell asleep.

When morning came, the night decided it wasn't finished. My watch said it was 8:17 am, but the sky was still dark. No change from last night. I carefully peered out the window, gasping at all the destruction. Telephone wires were down, streets were flooded, and cars were slowly moving through the streets without their drivers in them. The rain continued is destruction of…well, everything in sight.         

"I can't believe this is happening."

The way I figured, in that moment, was that I wasn't the only one left. I couldn't have been. There was no way I could have been the only one left in Florida. If I looked hard enough, I would find someone. It just made sense.

So, I grabbed a rain jacket from my closet, not that it would help all that much in a storm like this. But it was better than nothing. The flooding was up to 6 inches now, so my shoes and socks were instantly soaked. That’s actually what I can remember most at that moment, thinking about how uncomfortable it was going to be, running in wet shoes.

Unfortunately, that was all I was thinking, not about how I probably shouldn’t have been going out in the middle of a hurricane. Not about having any shield from the storm. And not about trying to find a way to survive this. I only realized that when I woke up.

After pocketing the key to the house, almost immediately I was on my side, and in pain. I can’t even remember if I had slipped, tripped over something, run into something, or if it was some fast moving piece of debris that had knocked me out, I’m not sure if I even knew what it was when it happened. The pain was gone in a few seconds as I blacked out.

 

When I came to again, it wasn’t raining. My clothes were soaked, and my head throbbed. I remember being sure that I had split my head in two somehow. I had never hurt so much, even when my parents had thrown me down the stairs a couple of years ago. After a couple of minutes of looking myself over, I tried to stand. It took a couple tries. Was it over? I wondered. Looking at the sky, it wasn’t clear. It just looked…overcast. And all around me, the looming storm clouds surrounded. Yet somehow it wasn’t raining. The streets were still flooded. Destruction everywhere. Debris everywhere.

At that moment, I thought it was over. It had to be, right? No more rain, hurricane gone. Seems to make sense. So in that moment, as a surfer, I really wanted to see the beach. I knew from a storm like this, the waves would be insane. Austin and I were always surfing the day before and after a hurricane. The waves were best then. Again, I wasn’t thinking.

I don’t even know how I could walk after all that I had been through, passed out on the ground in the middle of a seemingly unrelenting hurricane. But somehow, I did. We didn’t live far from the beach, so it wasn’t a problem. In fact, it was probably just a half-mile away. I was just surprised I could walk, period.

            Along the beach, is this huge, probably really expensive hotel. I think its ten stories up. I looked around, and didn’t see any cars in the parking lot.

            “Yeah, I can’t see this as a great time for vacationing…” I muttered to myself.

            I walked up to the front door, which had a large sign on it.

MANDATORY BUILDING EVACUATION IN PROGRESS

            No wonder.

            I kicked the door in (which wasn’t difficult), and almost fell face first. All the furniture in the lobby was floating around, including a desk chair that I almost tripped over. As much as I loved getting even more wet, and you know, floating through thick, dirty water, I made my way to the stairs and started climbing to the top floor, which would be the driest.

            I couldn’t believe the waves when I saw them out the window. I had never seen waves this big except on TV. They had to be 20 feet high. There was no beach. In fact, that was the reason the first floor was flooded. The waves had reached the hotel.

            “Oh my God.”

            You could feel the waves hit the building, even on the top floor. I was completely amazed by them, and I must’ve spent an hour watching them come in, pull out, come in again, crash against the building and go out again. In, out, in, crash, in, out, in, crash.

                                                       

They say that the second half of the hurricane, the part after the eye of the storm, is worse than the first half.

            They’re right.

            That’s when the most destruction occurs in the storm. Your body is weak, you’ve taken all you can bear and more. Like a building, the storm has weakened you, and at that point, you are so much closer to breaking than you were during the storm. But you don’t know when you’ll break. You just know that you will.

            The rain started again as I watched the waves crash against the building. Panic came, once more, and I told myself that the rain was not the storm, but just a calm rain. I gave that up when the wind came.

            Sprinting down the steps, I ran to the third floor. If the building was going to crash, I wanted to be as close to the ground as possible, but at the same time, I wanted to avoid flooding. The first floor was already flooded, and it wouldn’t take long for the second floor. I felt a little more secure on the third floor.

            I locked myself in the closet, and hid underneath a spare blanket, curled up in the corner. As the rain and wind came more forcefully, I kept telling myself that I would be fine. After all, this hotel was built on a beach in Florida, of all places. They had to have built it with some type of hurricane reinforcement. They just had it evacuated for safety reasons. Yes, that was it.

            Not quite.

            I could feel the rain hit the building like an avalanche of rocks falling down on top of me. Was that…hail? I wouldn’t know, because there was nothing that could have gotten me out of that closet in that moment. The wind blew harder. I heard the windows shatter in the room, and things began to be thrown around. I didn’t realize until the next morning that things had actually been pushed out of the other window, on the other side. Including the bed, which at first rammed into the closet door. I was glad I had the extra protection of it until I heard it slide away. The storm persisted. It was going to be a long night.

                    My eyes fluttered open as I became conscious again. I looked around, trying to gain awareness of my surroundings. Then it flooded back. Memories. I uncurled myself from the position I was in. My legs and arms ached from the strain. The strain of holding myself in a protective ball all night long. Examining them, I winced at the visible cuts and bruises. Luckily, blood did not match the pain I could certainly feel. I sat, trying not to hurt myself further. I sat for a long while. The door was gone. Actually, the whole wall where the door was…was gone. There was no more furniture in the room, except for the counter that was bolted to the wall. There must be so much furniture outside in the parking lot, I thought. Or maybe the ocean pulled it all out to sea. Who knows? I sat, with all these questions in mind. But most of all, the most important question in mind was…is it over? That was when I began to hear something. It wasn’t anything scary. Not the sound of booming thunder, or who-knows-how-many-miles-an-hour winds. It was…a car? No, too loud for that. I crawled out from where I was and latched onto the wall where a window used to be. My eyes and ears searched for the sound as I looked past the destruction. I could see it. No wonder it was loud. Suddenly, I fell back on the floor. I could still see through the gaping window, but I all I could see was sky. Blue sky. Clear sky. Calm sky. Relief washed over me. It was over. All over. I began to shout.

 

 

Author's Note

please review, i want to know what people think of my writing.