Page 26

Oblivion

Colt

W e hunker down in the dingy basement for half an hour, but it feels longer. By the time the roaring wind dies down, and the distant voice of the announcer says the storm has passed over and it’s safe to come out, everyone’s rattled, quiet, and exhausted. Murmurs fall on the crowd as we start the ascent up the stairs, back to the stadium.

May looks ashamed when she removes her arms from around me, wrapping them around herself instead. She looks a lot smaller than I ever remember her being. She’d probably hate me for thinking it. ‘Sorry,’ she says as we climb the steps.

‘Don’t be,’ I reply immediately, maybe a little too quickly.

She seems taken aback, but nods, swallowing hard. There’s not really much to say. The damp spots on the shoulder of my hoodie are evidence of May’s tears, of the crack in her facade that she allowed me to see through. And that moment, as much as I could try to convince myself, that moment was definitely not fake. Fake doesn’t hang onto one another like the world is coming to an end.

The light splinters in through the tunnel, as if it’s the entrance to heaven or something equally magical, but what we see when we get a view of the field is vastly different. It doesn’t look like we were in the tornado’s path. That’s not saying much, though. There are various leaves and branches all in the bleachers, and the backpacks that were left behind on the sidelines have been tossed every which way, some missing completely. Water and beer bottles alike are strewn across the grass. The scoreboard blinks unhappily, flickering every few moments.

‘This isn’t the worst of it,’ Jordan says to May beside me. ‘Where did that fucker go, then, if not here?’

‘I don’t know.’ May exhales wearily. ‘But the damage here …’

Jordan taps at her phone, raising it in a feeble attempt to get bars. I catch a glimpse of the weather app on the screen. She squints at the reports. ‘Looks like we’re clear. And …’

She stops abruptly and lowers the phone slowly. Her eyes are wide with a hint of pity, as the rest of the girls assemble around us, stragglers coming from the crowd, drawn by the tension among their teammates.

‘May.’ Jordan regards her best friend with pursed lips, and May doesn’t seem to need explanation. She presses a fisted hand to her mouth. That same fear I saw on her face in the basement, the absolute terror, starts to creep back. That’s how I realize that the state of the field we’re looking at right now is just the beginning.

‘We,’ May finally chokes out, ‘need to go home.’

Jordan pockets her phone and looks to me. ‘Do you still have your car keys?’

This drive to Eagle Rock is nothing like the first. Everywhere we look, signs have been blown to the ground, front-yard trinkets lie scattered and broken, plants have been uprooted. When we hit the town itself, it becomes evident that Prosperity was fortunate.

I remember well enough that tornados leave giant gashes in the ground when they plough through, quite literally, and the gash starts to show right away. The Eagle Rock sign is split in two, and from there a massive wound cuts through the earth, raking its way through houses, shops, and storefronts that are carved open so wide you can see the bones of the structures. The church is completely destroyed, and part of its spire lies across the street.

In the passenger seat, May looks out of the window, stony-faced, unreadable. Shutting down.

I pull past what’s left of the feed store, and around towards the road that leads down to the ranch. I can’t even bring the truck up the driveway.

The minute I hit the brakes, May flings the door open and runs straight across the shingle-littered grass, her lacrosse cleats pounding straight into the muddy dirt. ‘PAPA!’ she yells. ‘MUMMA!’

Jordan, in the back seat, looks like someone’s sucked the life from her face. She’s pale as a sheet as she takes it all in. ‘My parents texted,’ she says quietly. ‘Spared our place. It’s so twisted. The paths these things take.’

The knots that form in the pit of my stomach agree. For your home to be standing, to have four walls and a roof, running water, electricity, it feels gut-wrenching when you see something like this.

We both get out of the truck, and I lock it before we jog down the way May went. My heart thuds double-time at the fear of what’s in store, more so about what May might have found. My fingers twitch, hands shaky, but my body is put at ease when Jordan and I catch sight of May and her parents in a shared embrace, standing outside what’s left of their home. It’s a miracle that the first floor of the house is still quite intact. Much of what’s around it – the fencing in the ranch, the barns, the stables, weren’t so fortunate. And then there’s the field. Our lacrosse field. My mouth goes dry when I see it in the distance, grass all torn up, goalposts ripped apart, netting in pieces, covered in shards of wood from the fences.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Jordan sighs.

‘You took the words right out my mouth.’

‘Lord.’ She kicks a piece of wood, glancing up at the parts that still stick up from the ground like fingers of a hand reaching up to the sky. ‘This is completely …’

‘Yeah.’ I crouch down and pick up a shattered photo frame, inside which is a news clipping of May, the calling card of exceptionally proud parents. UOKC RESEARCH AIMS TO PUT THE ‘EARLY’ IN EARLY DETECTION. A group of five people, May among them in a Johnny Cash T-shirt and jean shorts, poses beside one of the dated tornado sirens down in Prosperity.

‘Clean-up’s going to be an all-week affair.’ Jordan nudges me. ‘Red Cross will be here soon, but we’d better get a start on it now. C’mon.’

The house is still in a treacherous condition, so we wait on a couple of the Velascos’ construction-savvy friends to come over and help get inside so they can look around and grab what valuables they can find. Later on, the Red Cross arrive, joined by teams from the county, to assess the damage. I hear Mr Velasco mention that they’re fully insured, against floods and tornadoes, which is a very slight source of relief among all the chaos. The house is obviously their biggest concern, but then there’s the ranch – all the grazing land, the fences, the barns. And importantly, the animals, including May’s barrel-racing horse and the Velascos’ prize cattle, which Mrs Velasco assures May the ranch hands took to the evacuation barn, a town over, the second the tornado watch came on.

‘That’s good, at least.’ May sighs, wiping dirt off her hands on her sweatpants. ‘Rocky’s safe?’

‘Rocky’s safe, May, but where will we put him?’

‘We can take ’em all up to Tía’s, right? She’s got room on her farm.’

‘May.’ Mrs Velasco takes her daughter’s hand. ‘We are lucky . We can’t push it. We’ll take this a step at a time.’

Her mother heads off to check with the contractors alongside her dad. It’s definitely not my place – it’s not my scene, and I shouldn’t be saying shit considering I’m the guy who decided to turn up again after leaving the state – but I open my mouth anyway.

‘We’re here for you, May,’ I say tentatively. ‘If anyone can get back on their feet—’

‘Colt, you can stop now, alright?’ Her voice wavers, her eyes filling with tears, fists clenched at her sides. The hasty bun she’s tied her hair into threatens to fall out from on top of her head. ‘Please! Acting like you’ve been here all this time when you got out of this place as fast as you could and this, this is what we deal with while you’re up there at your game-night bars and your socials and your after-parties. Okay? I get why you’re here. I get it. I am sorry for the pain you are feeling. But you aren’t helping my pain when you treat me like you’re some sort of gift to the simple people of Oklahoma, right in front of my damn face and this house, our home …’

She covers her mouth with a quivering hand, shaking her head. ‘Please, please just let us be. Please, Colt.’