Tornado Brain

by Cat Patrick

  “Get up, then,” Mom said, mad, standing and turning toward the door, her knees popping when she moved. I don’t know when she’d gotten so creaky. “We’re going for a walk and then we’ll eat. It’s nonnegotiable.” Her voice didn’t have that nice mom tone to it anymore; it was flat.

  “I don’t want to go for a walk,” I whined. “Can’t we just eat lunch? I’m starving.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Mom said, still with an angry tone.

  Tones are something therapists teach you to try to notice. Gabe calls them “cues.” Most people just understand them automatically.

  Thinking of that made me think of when I was little and I thought automatic toilets were called automagic. On my big list of things to do in life is to write a letter to the people who make the dictionary to see if they’ll change it because my word is better. I was thinking about that when my mom raised her voice, which she rarely does.

  “Frankie! Get up from that bed!”

  “Fine,” I said, knowing I was going to get in big trouble if I didn’t.

  When I stood up, she left. I pulled my puffy vest on over my hoodie, lifted the hood over my head. I couldn’t remember when I’d last brushed my hair and there was a huge nest in it. I like my hair—it’s really thick and wavy—but I don’t like brushing out the nests it makes at all.

  I stepped into my red rain boots and tromped out of my room, down the hall, and to the elevator. My mom says the elevators are for the guests—did I mention that we live in an inn?—but I felt like breaking the rules.

  Outside, the billowy clouds had parted, and I could see blue sky for miles. It was windy, so I kept my hood up over my head. Wind in my ears is terrible.

  Charles, my mom’s boyfriend, and our dog, Pirate, were waiting for me in the parking lot, ready to go for a walk on the beach. Charles had on his usual outdoor uniform: work boots, faded jeans, a black T-shirt, a gray windbreaker, and a red beanie with his light brown hair flipping out underneath. When it wasn’t topped with a beanie, Charles wore his hair messy, like I did, but his was styled to look that way—with special organic hair products he ordered from Seattle and that my mom teased him about, which usually made him kiss her, which always grossed me out.

  I like Charles and used to wonder sometimes if my mom would marry him, but then she didn’t so I stopped wondering. My mom isn’t the marrying kind: she and my biological father weren’t married. Well, I mean, he was married . . . but to someone else. Adults make dumb choices sometimes, but I guess if they hadn’t made that dumb choice, I wouldn’t exist.

  Anyway, my mom and Charles work a lot, so they started this tradition of meeting up at break times for a short walk. Usually, we only have to do it on weekends or when we’re off school for teacher work days. I guess they didn’t feel like they were seeing me or my sister enough—or asking us enough uncomfortable questions.

  “Hey, boss,” Charles said, holding out a to-go cup that I knew had hot chocolate in it. His jacket sleeve pulled back when he reached out, showing a peek of the tattoos that covered his entire arm. Arms.

  I grunted something as I accepted the cup.

  “Say it’s mint tea if she asks,” Charles instructed, scratching his stubble, and I nodded. My mom doesn’t want us having sugar all the time. Well, she doesn’t want me having it all the time. Or red dye. Or processed foods. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, giving Pirate a rub behind her ear. Her name is Pirate because another dog scratched out her left eye in a fight and she looks like she has a permanent eye patch. It’s pretty disgusting, but the rest of her is cute so I try not to look at her eye and love her anyway.

  “Did they leave without us?”

  “I told them to go ahead,” Charles said. “I said we’d catch up.”

  Charles looked at me sideways like he was trying to figure out my mood, which he does a lot. Sometimes I’m okay with it and sometimes I want to growl at him, which I don’t do anymore because Gabe says it’s socially unacceptable, but I still think it’s a useful way of telling someone to quit it.

  It’s hard to understand why expressing yourself in growls or just directly saying that you don’t like something is bad. Manners seem like wrapping words in cotton balls, and I think it’s just easier to say the words without the fluff. I don’t have any friends, though, so I’m probably wrong. You probably shouldn’t take any of my advice.

  We started walking and we didn’t say any words for a while—regular ones or cotton-ball ones. The silence made me happy. I missed that about being friends with Colette: she was good at walking without talking without it being weird.

  I listened to the sound of Pirate’s tags clanking together as we went down the short paved road toward the ocean. They made a little song and I imagined myself dancing, but didn’t actually do it.

  Soon the pavement turned to sand and my bootheels dug in deeper with every step. I splashed through puddles from a quick rain that had happened earlier, then moved over to the left side of the sandy path to run my hand along the wispy beach grass that came up to my waist.

  We got to the point where the grass ends and opens up to the beach, which stretches for miles in both directions. I shaded my eyes so I could see where my mom was: she and my sister were walking at the edge of the tide.

  “Some people think the missing kid might be Colette,” I said to Charles, watching the water. It was choppy today and looked like the waves were siblings fighting with each other. The wind was threatening to pull back my hood, so I yanked the strings tighter. “She wasn’t at school today and no one could reach her.”

  “It’s scary, no matter who it is,” Charles said.

  “Yeah,” I said, not sure I really felt scared. I felt more like a mixture of curious and excited, which I’m pretty sure is not the right way to feel when a kid from your school could be in trouble. My emotions don’t always work like they’re supposed to, and it felt like they were extra off right then because I should have been at school, but I was walking on the beach.

  “What if they don’t find the kid?” I asked Charles, watching my mom and sister walking, holding hands. I didn’t do that with my mom, and it made me feel jealous.

  “That would be awful,” Charles said, taking Pirate off her leash. She bolted toward the water to chase the seagulls as they searched for lunch of their own. “No matter who it is, it’d be awful.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering if I’d really feel awful or if I’d have to pretend to feel awful so everyone wouldn’t think I was weird.

  Pirate bounded back our way with a huge stick in her mouth, circled Charles, and dropped it near his feet. She waited for him to throw it, then took off again in a flash.

  “Hey, Charles?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think it’s Colette,” I said. I just had a feeling.

  The truth was, I’d lied to Tess and Mia: I had seen Colette the day before. She’d randomly come by my room for the first time since February. We’d had a fight and she’d left. Thinking through the fight was the reason I couldn’t fall asleep the night before: it’d stuck with me into the late-night hours. Now I was feeling really confused.

  “I hope you’re wrong, buddy,” Charles said, smiling at me.

  Me too, I thought.

  “Now what’s she doing?” Charles asked, shielding his eyes from the sun and watching Pirate. It looked like she was trying to dig up a crab. “She’s going to get pinched again,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I nodded and walked over to a log that the ocean hadn’t wanted anymore. It had sand packed into the grooves, but it was dry enough to use as a bench. I inspected it for bugs, then sat down, thinking about nothing or everything.

  I picked up a stick and wrote Hi in the wet sand.

  Charles took the stick and wrote in the sand Hi back. I hadn’t noticed him there again. Then my mom and sister were on their
way toward us, and I wondered how much time had gone by while I was spacing out. That happens sometimes.

  “What’s in the cup?” Mom asked.

  “Hot chocolate,” I said without thinking. My mom gave Charles a mad-ish look and Charles shrugged.

  “No more sugar for you today,” Mom said to me, continuing on toward the inn. Charles and Pirate started jogging together in the same direction.

  My sister followed them, and as she walked by me, she said, “That sucks for you. She just said she’s making chocolate cake for dessert tonight.”

  “Why are you always so annoying?” I snapped. It was only when I saw the hurt in her eyes that I realized she’d been showing empathy, not rubbing it in.

  “Whatever, Frankie,” Tess said quietly, shaking her head. “I don’t know what’s going on with you lately.”

  She ran off like a gazelle on her long legs and I was left to walk back to the inn alone on my shorter ones.

  Oh, did I say that Tess is my sister? Yeah, she is. She’s one minute older than me. Yes, that means we’re twins. Not identical ones: the fraternal kind.

  And yes, my twin sister stole the only friend I’d ever had.

  chapter 3

  Myth: Tornadoes bring a drop in atmospheric pressure that will make your house explode if your house is closed up.

  MY MOM AND Charles live in a cottage behind the inn. Tess and I shared the second bedroom in the cottage until we started middle school. That’s when Tess asked Mom if it’d be okay if she started using one of the rooms inside the inn, one of the ones that didn’t have a view or anything.

  Tess had explained that all of her friends had their own rooms and she needed privacy to work on her art. She wanted to go to art school someday, which I bet she could, except then she’d have to show her drawings to someone and that freaks her out for some reason so maybe not. Anyway, when Tess asked for her own room, I didn’t think it was about art: I thought it was about not wanting to share a room with me anymore.

  Whatever the reason, Mom and Charles agreed. Mom set ground rules for Tess, like she could never let anyone in her room without getting permission, and she always had to keep the door bolted at night, and she had to be in her room at nine and stay there all night, and she had to check in with Mom or Charles before going to sleep.

  Then I told them that it wasn’t fair that Tess got to have a room at the inn and I didn’t. Mom probably felt more nervous about letting me do it than Tess—because she trusts Tess more than she trusts me—but she said yes. She made us have connecting rooms, which, honestly, made me feel a lot better because I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to move out of the cottage. The whole first year, Tess and I slept with the doors connecting our rooms wide open. Did you know some people think your house will explode if your windows and doors are shut during a tornado? It’s not true, but I liked the doors open anyway. Except at the beginning of this school year, Tess started closing hers. And it was weird to have hers closed and mine open, so I started closing mine, too.

  I was thinking about how I didn’t like closed doors while I watched Tess texting. She had her knees pulled up into the chair and the light from the screen was making her skin look blue. Her thumbs went tap-tap-tap-tap, then she waited, biting her thumbnail, for a response.

  “Who are you texting?” I asked.

  Tess looked up at me sharply, then at Mom’s back. Mom was over by the sink cutting cucumbers into slices for the guest water jugs. The water was running so she hadn’t heard me.

  “It’s a group text,” Tess whispered. “Everyone’s wondering who the kid is that’s missing. Some people got called to the police station.”

  The water turned off. “Who’s in the group text?” I asked.

  Mom turned around quickly. “Tess!” she said. “No phones at the table, you know the rule—especially right now, with everything that’s going on.” She walked over and held out a wet hand for the phone.

  Tess frowned at me and handed it over. “Sorry, Mom.”

  I watched Tess dunk her grilled cheese in her tomato soup and take a bite. She did it so perfectly, not dripping any soup from the bowl to her mouth. My whole body felt aware of the fact that we were at the cottage instead of the cafeteria. I didn’t like the alteration in my normal schedule.

  “Do you have homework?” Mom asked, not directing the question at either of us. I thought it was weird she was asking about homework, but parents are weird sometimes.

  “We didn’t have school except for part of first period,” I said to her back, leaving a trail of tomato soup like a crime scene on the tablecloth. “How could we have homework?”

  “I’m going to work on my portfolio this afternoon,” Tess said, probably just to make herself look good since she was mad at me for getting her phone taken away.

  “Good for you,” I grumbled. Mom turned around and gave me a sharp look.

  “Be kind to your sister,” she said. “And you’d be smart to work on your big science project. That’s a great thing to do today. It’d be a nice distraction.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Tess said.

  “It’s not due until May,” I protested.

  “Yes, but May is only two weeks away, and it’s a big undertaking,” Mom said. “It’ll mean a lot of planning and organization. And you’ll want to write and rewrite your assessment to make sure it says exactly what you want it to say.” I didn’t answer her, because I probably wasn’t going to do that and we both knew it, so she asked, “Well, what are you going to do today, then? I want you to find something productive. You can’t just wander around aimlessly or watch Tornado Alley all day.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Mom, it’s Tornado Ally. Geez.”

  “Whatever it’s called, you can’t spend your whole day watching it,” she replied as my brain wandered off.

  I’d been watching Tornado Ally when Colette knocked on my door the night before. I ignored the first knocks. And the second set. I thought it was a guest knocking on the wrong door, which happens more than you might think. But after the third set of knocks, I flung open the door impatiently.

  “Hi, Frankie,” Colette said like it was nothing, like she hadn’t ignored me since February. She had her bright red hair pulled back in a knot and a big smile on her super-freckled face. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt with a dolphin pattern. The sweatshirt was a little too tight in the waist.

  “Hi,” I said, going back to my desk.

  “I see you’re busy,” she said, barely stepping into the room. She knew I didn’t like people in my space. “I won’t stay long, but I was wondering if I could borrow that old notebook? That we used to write in?” I turned in my chair and gave her an annoyed look. She pulled down the hem of her sweatshirt and explained: “I want to copy something.”

  “No,” I said, flipping around to face my computer.

  “No?” Colette asked, like she couldn’t believe I wouldn’t just hand over what she wanted after she hadn’t spoken to me for two months.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t have it.”

  “Come on, Frankie,” she said. “I’ll take care of it and I’ll bring it back. I’ll give it to you at school tomorrow.”

  “No!” I said forcefully, staring at the screen. I could see her reflection in it.

  I heard her take a deep breath behind me. “Are you going to do homework at your mom’s cottage?”

  “None of your business,” I said. Why do you care about my homework?

  “Will you just let me borrow the notebook, please?” Colette asked, sweetness in her voice.

  “No!” I shouted.

  “Why not?” Colette demanded, anger replacing the sweetness. “It’s mine as much as it’s yours.”

  “I lost it,” I said quietly, tapping my fingernail on the mouse too softly to make it actually go click. My cheeks were growing hot.

  “I can te
ll you’re lying,” Colette said. “You never look at me when you lie. Why do you have to be like that?”

  The little monsters inside that turn up my temperature and make me scream were gathering—and I told myself with my voice on zero that yelling at Colette wouldn’t be a good idea because my mom might hear. Or a guest might call the front desk and tell her. Instead, I grabbed my noise-canceling headphones and put them on.

  A few seconds later, I felt the door shut hard. It wasn’t a slam because Colette wouldn’t do that. Only I slam doors, it seems—

  “Frankie!” Mom said urgently, pulling me out of my memory. “Please listen to me.”

  “What?” I asked, blinking, no clue how long she’d been talking to me. “What’s happening?”

  Tess sighed.

  “What?”

  She shook her head at me.

  “I just got off the phone with the police,” Mom said. I hadn’t heard her phone ring—I hadn’t heard her talking. I was wondering if my ears were working properly when my mom said, “I’m so sorry, girls, but they told me that the missing girl is Colette.”

  “I knew it,” I said flatly.

  “No!” Tess wailed over my words, like she hadn’t already thought the same thing, tears rushing down her face. “Where do they think she is? Have they checked hospitals? This can’t be happening!”

  “They don’t know anything,” Mom said, hugging Tess. She smoothed her hair and wiped her cheeks. “They’re trying their hardest to find her. That’s why they want her friends to come in and answer some questions. They’re hoping it might help.”

  “When?” Tess whispered.

  “Right now.”

  chapter 4

  Fact: Sometimes you can’t see a tornado.

  MY SISTER AND I stopped having joint birthday parties when we were eleven.

  Even though she’s not that outgoing, everyone likes Tess. It seems like because she doesn’t try to be everyone’s friend, they all try harder to be hers. And when it came to our birthday parties, Tess always invited the whole class so no one would feel left out.