Before the Storm Read online

  Emily suddenly grabbed my arm. “We got to hide!” she said again. She had to be really scared because she’d never touched me before on purpose.

  I knew she was wrong about hiding, but now the floor was on fire, the flames coming toward us.

  “Think!” I said out loud, though I was only talking to myself. I hit the side of my head with my hand. “Brain, you gotta kick in!”

  Emily pressed her face against my shoulder, whimpering like a puppy, and the fire rose around us like a forest of golden trees.

  Chapter Two

  Maggie

  MY FATHER WAS KILLED BY A WHALE.

  I hardly ever told people how he died because they’d think I was making it up. Then I’d have to go into the whole story and watch their eyes pop and their skin break out in goose bumps. They’d talk about Ahab and Jonah, and I would know that Daddy’s death had morphed into their entertainment. When I was a little girl, he was my whole world—my best friend and protector. He was awesome. He was a minister who built a chapel for his tiny congregation with his own hands. When people turned him into a character in a story, one they’d tell their friends and family over pizza or ice cream, I had to walk away. So, it was easier not to talk about it in the first place. If someone asked me how my father died, I’d just say “heart.” That was the truth, anyway.

  The night Andy went to the lock-in, I knew I had to visit my father—or at least try to visit him. It didn’t always work. Out of my thirty or forty tries, I only made contact with him three times. That made the visits even more meaningful to me. I’d never stop trying.

  I called Mom to let her know the lock-in had been moved from Drury Memorial’s youth building to the church itself, so she’d know where to pick Andy up in the morning. Then I said I was going over to Amber Donnelly’s, which was a total crock. I hadn’t hung out with Amber in months, though we sometimes still studied together. Hanging out with Amber required listening to her talk nonstop about her boyfriend, Travis Hardy. “Me and Travis this,” and “me and Travis that,” until I wanted to scream. Amber was in AP classes like me, but you wouldn’t know it from her grammar. Plus, she was such a poser, totally caught up in her looks and who she hung out with. I never realized it until this year.

  So instead of going to Amber’s, I drove to the northern end of the island, which, on a midweek night in late March, felt like the end of the universe. In fourteen miles, I saw only two other cars on the road, both heading south, and few of the houses had lights on inside. The moon was so full and bright that weird shadows of shrubs and mailboxes were on the road in front of me. I thought I was seeing dogs or deer in the road and I kept braking for nothing. I was relieved when I spotted the row of cottages on the beach.

  That end of the island was always getting chewed up by storms, and the six oceanfront cottages along New River Inlet Road were, every single one of them, condemned. Between the cottages and the street was another row of houses, all waiting for their turn to become oceanfront. I thought that would happen long ago; we had to abandon our house after Hurricane Fran, when I was five. But the condemned houses still stood empty, and I hoped they’d remain that way for the rest of my life.

  Our tiny cottage was round, and it leaned ever so slightly to the left on long exposed pilings. The outdoor shower and storage closet that used to make up the ground floor had slipped into the sea along with the septic tank. The wood siding had been bleached so pale by decades under the sun that it looked like frosted glass in the moonlight. The cottage had a name—The Sea Tender—given to it by my Grandpa Lockwood. Long before I was born, Grandpa burned that name into a board and hung it above the front door, but the sign blew away a couple of years ago and even though I searched for it in the sand, I never found it.

  The wind blew my hair across my face as I got out of the car, and the waves sounded like nonstop thunder. Topsail Island was so narrow that we could hear the ocean from our house on Stump Sound, but this was different. My feet vibrated from the pounding of the waves on the beach, and I knew the sea was wild tonight.

  I had a flashlight, but I didn’t need it as I walked along the skinny boardwalk between two of the front-row houses to reach our old cottage. The bottom step used to sit on the sand, but now it was up to my waist. I moved the cinder block from behind one of the pilings into place below the steps, stood on top of it, then boosted myself onto the bottom step and climbed up to the deck. A long board nailed across the front door read Condemned, and I could just manage to squeeze my key beneath it into the lock. Mom was a pack rat, and I found the key in her desk drawer two years earlier, when I first decided to go to the cottage. I ducked below the sign and walked into the living room, my sandals grinding on the gritty floor.

  I knew the inside of the cottage as well as I knew our house on Stump Sound. I walked through the dark living room to the kitchen, dodging some of our old furniture, which had been too ratty and disgusting to save even ten years ago. I turned on my flashlight and put it on the counter so the light hit the cabinet above the stove. I opened the cabinet, which was empty except for a plastic bag of marijuana, a few rolled joints and some boxes of matches. My hands shook as I lit one of the joints, breathing the smoke deep into my lungs. I held my breath until the top of my head tingled. I craved that out-of-body feeling tonight.

  Opening the back door, I was slammed by the roar of the waves. My hair was long and way too wavy and it sucked moisture from the air like a sponge. It blew all over the place and I tucked it beneath the collar of my jacket as I stepped onto the narrow deck. I used to take a shower when I got home from the cottage, the way some kids showered to wash away the scent of cigarettes. I thought Mom would take one sniff and know where I’d been. I deserved to feel guilty, because it wasn’t just the hope of being with Daddy that drew me to the cottage. I wasn’t all that innocent.

  I sat on the edge of the deck, my legs dangling in the air, and stared out at the long sliver of moonlight on the water. I rested my elbows on the lower rung of the railing. Saltwater mist wet my cheeks, and when I licked my lips, I tasted my childhood.

  I took another hit from the joint and tried to still my mind.

  When I was fifteen, I got my level-one driver’s license and was allowed to drive with an adult in the car. One night I had this crazy urge to go to the cottage. I couldn’t say why, but one minute, I was studying for a history exam, and the next I was sneaking out the front door while Mom and Andy slept. There was no moon at all that night and I was scared shitless. It was December and dark and I barely knew how to steer, much less use the gas and the brake, but I made it the seven miles to the cottage. I sat on the deck, shivering with the cold. That was the first time I felt Daddy. He was right next to me, rising up from the sea in a cloud of mist, wrapping his arms around me so tightly that I felt warm enough to take off my sweater. I cried from the joy of having him close. I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t believe in ghosts or premonitions or even in heaven and hell. But I believed Daddy was there in a way I can’t explain. I just knew it was true.

  I felt like Daddy was with me a couple more times since then, but tonight I had trouble stilling my mind enough to let him in. I read on the Internet about making contact with people who’d died. Every Web site had different advice, but they all said that stilling your mind was the first thing you needed to do. My mind was racing, though, the weed not mellowing me the way it usually did.

  “Daddy,” I whispered into the wind, “I really need you tonight.” Squeezing my eyes more tightly closed, I tried to picture his wavy dark hair. The smile he always wore when he looked at me.

  Then I started thinking about telling Mom I wouldn’t be valedictorian when I graduated in a couple of months, like she expected. What would she say? I was an honors student all through school until this semester. I hoped she’d say it was no big thing, since I was already accepted at UNC in Wilmington. Which started me thinking about leaving home. How was Mom going to handle Andy without me?

  As a mother, Mom was borderline oka
y. She was smart and she could be cool sometimes, but she loved Andy so much that she suffocated him, and she didn’t have a clue. My brother was my biggest worry. Probably ninety-five percent of my time, I thought about him. Even when I thought about other things, he was still in a little corner of my mind, the same way I knew that it was spring or that we lived in North Carolina or that I was female.

  I talked Mom into letting Andy go to the lock-in tonight. He was fifteen; she had to let go a little and besides, Emily’s mother was one of the chaperones. I hoped he was having a good time and acting normal. His grip on social etiquette was pretty lame. Would they have dancing at the lock-in? It cracked me up to imagine Andy and Emily dancing together.

  My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket and I pulled it out to look at the display. Mom. I slipped it back in my jeans, hoping she didn’t try to reach me at Amber’s and discover I wasn’t there.

  The phone rang again. That was our signal—the call-twice-in-a-row signal that meant This is serious. Answer now. So I jumped up and walked into the house. I pulled the door closed to block out the sound of the ocean before hitting the talk button.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Oh my God, Maggie!” Mom sounded breathless, as though she’d run up the stairs. “The church is on fire!”

  “What church?” I froze.

  “Drury Memorial. They just cut into the TV to announce it. They showed a picture.” She choked on a sob. “It’s completely engulfed in flames. People are still inside!”

  “No way!” The weed suddenly hit me. I was dizzy, and I leaned over the sink in case I got sick. Andy. He wouldn’t know what to do.

  “I’m going over there now,” Mom said. Her car door squeaked open, then slammed shut. “Are you at Amber’s?”

  “I’m…” I glanced out the door at the dark ocean. “Yes.” She was so easy to lie to. Her focus was always on Andy, hardly ever on me. I stubbed out the joint in the sink. “I’ll meet you there,” I added. “At the church.”

  “Hurry!” she said. I pictured her pinching the phone between her chin and shoulder as she started the car.

  “Stay calm,” I said. “Drive carefully.”

  “You, too. But hurry!”

  I was already heading toward the front door. Forgetting about the Condemned sign, I ran right into it, yelping as it knocked the air from my lungs. I ducked beneath it, jumped to the sand and ran down the boardwalk to my Jetta. I was miles from the church in Surf City. Miles from my baby brother. I felt so sick. I began crying as I turned the key in the ignition. It was my fault if something happened to him. I started to pray, something I only did when I was desperate. Dear God, I thought, as I sped down New River Inlet Road, don’t let anything happen to Andy. Please. Let it happen to me instead. I’m the liar. I’m the bad kid.

  I drove all the way to Surf City, saying that prayer over and over in my mind until I saw the smoke in the sky. Then I started saying it out loud.

  Chapter Three

  Laurel

  THERE IS ONLY ONE STOPLIGHT ON THE twenty-six miles of Topsail Island. It sits two short blocks from the beach in the heart of Surf City, and it glowed red when my car approached it and was still red when I left it behind. If there’d been a dozen red lights, they wouldn’t have stopped me. People always told me I was a determined woman and I was never more so than the night of the fire.

  Miles before the stoplight, I’d seen the yellow glow in the sky, and now I could smell the fire itself. I pictured the old church. I’d only been inside it a few times for weddings and funerals, but I knew it had pine floors, probably soaked with years of oily cleaner, just tempting someone to toss a match on them. I knew more than I wanted to know about fires. I’d lost my parents to one, plus Jamie had been a volunteer firefighter before he died. He told me about clapboard buildings that were nothing but tinder. Probably one of the kids lit a cigarette, tossed the match on the floor. Why oh why did I listen to Maggie? I never should have let Andy go. Maggie was around him so much, she thought of him as a normal kid. You got that way when you were around him a lot. You got used to his oddities, took his limitations for granted. Then you’d see him out in the world and realize he still didn’t fit in, no matter how much you’d tried to make that happen. It was easy to get seduced into thinking he was okay when the environment around him was so carefully controlled and familiar. Tonight, though, I threw him to the wolves.

  The street near Drury Memorial was clotted with fire trucks and police cars and ambulances and I had to park a block away in front of Jabeen’s Java and The Pony Express. I’d barely come to a stop before I flew out of my car and started running toward the fire.

  A few people stood along the road watching clouds of smoke and steam gush from the church into the bright night sky. There were shouts and sirens and a sickening acrid smell in the air as I ran toward the front doors of the church. Huge floodlights illuminated the building and gave me tunnel vision. All I saw were those gaping doors, smoke belching from them, and they were my target.

  “Grab her!” someone shouted.

  Long, wiry arms locked around me from behind.

  “Let go of me!” I clawed at the arms with my fingernails, but whoever was holding me had a grip like a steel trap.

  “We have a staging area set up, ma’am,” he shouted into my ear. “Most of the children are out and safe.”

  “What do you mean most?” I twisted against the vise of his arms. “Where’s my son?”

  He dragged me across the sandy lot before loosening his hold on me. “They’ve got names of the children on a list,” he said as he let go.

  “Where?” I spun around to see the face of Reverend Bill, pastor of Drury Memorial. If there was a person on Topsail Island I didn’t like, it was Reverend Bill. He looked no happier to realize it was me he’d been holding in his arms.

  “One of your children was here?” He sounded stunned that I’d let a child of mine set foot in his church. I never should have.

  “Andy,” I said. Then I called his name. “Andy!” I shaded my eyes from the floodlights as I surveyed the scene. He’d worn his tan pants, olive green-striped shirt, and new sneakers tonight. I searched for the striped shirt, but the chaos of the scene suddenly overwhelmed my vision. Kids were everywhere, some sprawled on the sand, others sitting up or bent over, coughing. Generators roared as they fueled the lights, and static from police radios crackled in the air. Parents called out the names of their children. “Tracy!” “Josh!” “Amanda!” An EMT leaned over a girl, giving her CPR. The nurse in me wanted to help, but the mother in me was stronger.

  Above my head, a helicopter thrummed as it rose from the beach.

  “Andy!” I shouted to the helicopter, only vaguely aware of how irrational I must have seemed.

  Reverend Bill was clutching my arm, tugging me across the street through a maze of fire trucks and police cars to an area lit by another floodlight and cordoned off with yellow police tape. Inside the tape, people stood shoulder to shoulder, shouting and pushing.

  “See that girl over there?” Reverend Bill pointed into the crowd of people.

  “Who? Where?” I stood on my toes trying to see better.

  “The one in uniform,” he shouted. “She’s taking names, hooking parents up with their kids. You go see—”

  I pulled away from him before he could finish the sentence. I didn’t bother looking for an entrance into the cordoned-off area. Instead, I climbed over the tape and plowed into the clot of people.

  Parents crowded around the officer, who I recognized as Patty Shales. Her kids went to the elementary school in Sneads Ferry where I was a part-time nurse.

  “Patty!” I shouted from the sea of parents. “Do you know where Andy is?”

  She glanced over at me just as a man grabbed the clipboard from her hands. I couldn’t see what was happening, but Patty’s head disappeared from my view amid flailing arms and angry shouting.

  From somewhere behind me, I heard the words “killed” and “dead.
” I swung around to see two women, red eyed, hands to their mouths.

  “Who’s killed?” I asked. “Who’s dead?”

  One of the women wiped tears from her eyes. “I heard they found a body,” she said. “Some kids was trapped inside. My daughter’s here somewhere. I just pray to the Lord—” She shook her head, unable to finish her sentence.

  I felt suddenly nauseated by the smell of the fire, a tarry chemical smell that burned my nostrils and throat.

  “My son’s here, too,” I said, though I doubted the woman even heard me.

  “Laurel!” Sara Weston lifted the yellow tape and ducked under it, running up to me. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “Andy’s here. Is Keith?”

  She nodded, pressing a trembling hand to her cheek. “I can’t find him,” she said. “Someone said he got burned, but I—”

  She stopped speaking as an ominous creaking sound came from the far side of the church—the sort of sound a massive tree makes as it starts to fall. Everyone froze, staring at the church as the rear of the roof collapsed in one long wave, sending smoke and embers into the air.

  “Oh my God, Laurel!” Sara pressed her face against my shoulder and I wrapped my arm around her as we were jostled by people trying to get closer to Patty. Parents stepped on our feet, pushing us one way, then another, and Sara and I pushed back as a unit, bullish and driven. I probably knew many of the people I fought out of my way, but in the heat of the moment, we were all simply desperate parents. This is what it was like inside, I thought, panic rising in my throat. All the kids pushing at once to get out of the church.

  “Patty!” I shouted again, but I was only one voice of many. She heard me, though.