The Dysasters

by P. C. Cast

  “Actually, Sabine told me about this place just down the road. The same one where you get those spaceship squashes. I guess they have food and there’s a live band and they set up a dance floor. They were going to come by and get us so we could go on a—”

  “Double date!” Tate’s cheeks flushed bubblegum pink.

  Foster smiled. “So you want to?”

  “Yes!” His cheeks were blazing now, and Foster felt a little foolish for ever turning this whole double date invite into such a huge thing.

  * * *

  Foster crossed her legs, uncrossed them, and then finally settled on placing her hands in her lap as she sat at the picnic table with Sabine while they waited for Finn and Tate to return with glasses of what Sabine called the world’s best marionberry lemonade.

  The small crowd’s spirited laughter drifted over to them on the backs of fluttering monarchs as they flitted between the tables on their way to fresh sprigs of bright purple flowers that were potted around the edges of the dance floor. Foster closed her eyes for a brief moment, listening to the gently tinkling wind chimes hanging around the red barn’s storefront, all lit up with sparkling strands of lights.

  A soft gust swirled up from under the wooden table, and Foster pressed her hands more firmly against her thighs. She wasn’t used to having to be so vigilant about keeping her goodies hidden from the outside world. That’s what pants were for.

  “See, you look like a girl. A pretty girl. Especially when you don’t do that.” Sabine waggled her finger across the table at Foster’s face. “Frown all annoyed and pee pantsy like that.”

  “I’m not frowning,” Foster huffed, realizing she was indeed frowning. “And I don’t have to wear a dress to look pretty or like a girl.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Look at me,” Sabine stood, did a sassy little twirl, the fringed edges of her crop top lifting from her jeans to join in her spin, and sat back down. “I’m not wearing a dress and I look good enough to eat. I only meant that a change in clothes can make you feel like a completely different woman. So can a good wig or a pair of thigh-high faux leather boots, but I don’t think you’re ready for either of those things.”

  “Not ready for what?” Finn asked as he and Tate set down the drinks and he took a seat on the bench next to Sabine.

  “For these moves!” Sabine grabbed Finn’s hand and practically pulled him onto the dance floor. “See you two out there.” She winked before galloping over to where Finn was standing, snapping and tapping the toe of his boot to the beat.

  “So, what do you think?” Tate shoved his hands into his pockets and removed them just as quickly. “Would you like to dance? Again?”

  “Well, yeah, but this is a slow song, not a swing-me-around song.”

  “Hey, no worries. I can do slow, just follow me. I got ya. Again.”

  “You won’t drop me this time?”

  “Never.”

  Foster felt kind of drunk as Tate offered her his hand and guided her to the makeshift dance floor. Bubbles of excitement popped throughout her body, making her dizzy and fizzy and giddy. The only other time she’d felt like this was after half a bottle of cheap champagne in at, well, space camp.

  “Fucking space camp,” she mumbled.

  “What was that?” Tate’s eyes were the same endless blue as the sky, and Foster thought, for a moment, that if he never looked at her again she might just die.

  “I’m having a great time. It’s wonderful, really.” If Past Foster could see her now, she’d smack her and tell her that the world was unraveling and people needed saving and she hadn’t spent nearly enough time being depressed. But Present Foster didn’t much care for her former prickly, grumpy self. She wanted to bottle this girl, this moment, this feeling, and be this new person forever. Foster lifted her hand from Tate’s broad shoulder, flipped her hair, and giggled.

  “You’re laughing.”

  “I am.”

  Tate moved her slowly, confidently around the dance floor. His hand lowered to the small of her back as his thick fingers spread wide and he held her more firmly, pressing her to him, squeezing the air out of the space keeping them apart.

  And she let him.

  Foster never thought she wanted to be that girl, the one who melted into someone else and called him happiness, but if this is how it started, it sure felt damn good.

  The music changed to a dreamy, jazzy melody and Foster’s eyelids hung heavy as she closed out the world around them and reveled in Tate’s earthy scents of hay and horses and the way each muscle of his chest firmed against hers as he maneuvered them around the dance floor.

  “You’re okay?” It was less a question, and more a release of tension, but Foster answered anyway.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You seem … different.”

  She was. She could feel it. It was as if she’d been living inside someone else this whole time, waiting, incubating, until the space around her was safe enough to occupy—safe enough to call home. Her entire world might not be safe, but Tate was. Her Tate.

  Foster’s nerves fizzed with warmth.

  Could he actually be hers?

  “Tate—”

  “Foster—” they blurted simultaneously.

  Tate brushed a stray hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear as he guided them to an empty corner of the dance floor. “Go ahead.”

  “Right now, with you … This is the only place I want to be.”

  And then his breath was all she knew, like he’d peeled the air from the clouds, stored it in his lungs, and brought it to her as a gift. His mouth covered hers, searching for answers and releasing soft, patient prayers with each flick of his tongue.

  The earth beneath Foster’s feet stilled as if she and Tate controlled the entire planet, and at this moment each of them poured their energy into the other and there was nothing left to keep it spinning.

  Then someone screamed.

  Not a bloodcurdling shriek. More of a confused and frightened squeal for attention.

  The music stopped.

  And then there were gasps followed by chairs scraping the pavement and rushed footsteps beating into the gravel in sharp, staccato crunches.

  Foster didn’t want to pull away, didn’t want to stop the sweet exchange that had her nerves alight with the promise of their future. But she had to. Something was wrong. She could hear it in the way the people ran through the parking lot and the yells coming from behind them—coming from Sabine and Finn.

  Keeping her tucked against his side with his arm snuggly around her shoulder, he turned them to face the fields behind the barn-like store. And there, descending on them against an angry red setting sun, was a wall cloud spewing the hollow point of a deadly funnel—a funnel that was coming directly at them.

  18

  TATE

  “Fuck! No no no no no. This shit is not happening again!” Tate’s voice was strong and serious, and didn’t shake at all—even though his insides were spinning around in a weird rush of ohmygod I just kissed Foster and fucking tornado is going to kill us all!

  “Tate! Foster! You gotta do something!” Finn spoke fast and low.

  “Get out of here. Now,” Tate told their friends.

  “Okay, yeah. Let’s get back in the truck. I’m sure we can outrun it,” Sabine panted, looking wide-eyed and truly terrified.

  In his imagination Tate could see the two of them crushed in the middle of a mound of vehicles … just before they exploded …

  “Tate!”

  Foster’s voice brought Tate’s mind back to the present. He met her haunted gaze.

  “There isn’t time to run,” she said.

  “Hey, wake up you two! We need to get out of here!” Sabine cried.

  “No. Not by driving,” Tate said. “The parking lot’s already a traffic jam. None of them are going to make it out of here.”

  “Listen up!” a man’s voice boomed over the band’s loudspeaker system. “The Bennett Farm across the street has
a root cellar! Everyone over there! Hurry!”

  The panicked tide of people shifted direction, and instead of bottling up the parking lot, people climbed over Bella’s fence, crowded through the gate, and poured across the little two-lane road as the sky opened and rain began to pelt them along with the whipping wind.

  “Go!” Foster told Sabine and Finn. “Get to the cellar!”

  Finn and Sabine nodded and, holding tight to each other’s hand, started to rush off, but Sabine pulled them to a stop to shout over the wind. “What about you two? You stay out here you’re going to get killed!”

  Tate and Foster shared a long look. He nodded, understanding the wisdom in Foster’s serious green eyes, and then he told Sabine, “We’re going to stop this tornado from killing anyone.”

  “But how can—” Finn began, but Foster cut him off.

  “Don’t worry about that. Just get out of here. Tate and I can handle this.”

  Then, very deliberately, Foster took Tate’s hand, and squeezed it before looking up at him with those eyes and that beautiful, honest face. “We can do this. We can save these people.”

  And suddenly Tate believed they could do it—they could save them. “Together,” he said. “We’ll save ’em, like we couldn’t save our parents.”

  Holding hands, Tate and Foster walked in the opposite direction everyone else was running. They walked around the rear of the store and directly for the diving funnel.

  “Okay, tell me again about how you got the willows to be your air orchestra,” Tate said. His voice was calm, but he and Foster were clinging to each other’s hand as if they were living lifelines.

  Foster didn’t look at him. She stared at the funnel. He could feel the trembling of her body through their joined hands.

  “Hey,” he pulled her so that she had to look at him. Her green eyes were wide and a little glassy. Her face was almost completely drained of color, and her pretty yellow dress had wilted against her skin like the long, dank strands of her muted hair. He thought she looked as terrified as he felt, and Tate knew that was bad. Real bad. So, he touched her cheek and spoke softly to her, like they had all the time in the world to chat and not like they were standing in lashing rain directly in the path of a descending tornado.

  “Hey,” he repeated. “We’ve got this. I flew. You played an air symphony. We’ve been practicing for two weeks. So, remind me. What did you say about the willow music?”

  “I—uh—I said it’s a-a-b-bout how I’m feeling,” she stuttered at first because her teeth were chattering from cold and fear, but as she spoke Foster steadied herself and got stronger. “If I’m negative, things don’t go so well, but when I’m relaxed and not really trying—or just having fun—then air is almost easy to control.”

  “Okay. So. Let’s have a good time.” Suddenly, Tate grinned. “Hey! You said Cora liked the Rat Pack. Do you know the words to Sinatra’s ‘Luck Be a Lady’?”

  In typical Foster fashion, she frowned and then rolled her eyes at him. “Seriously? You want to sing right now?”

  He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Seriously. And dance. And make beautiful air music. If it’s about how we feel, it could work.” Then, not caring that he definitely looked like a crazy person—after all, the only person who could see him was Foster, and she already knew his kind of crazy—he started snapping his fingers to the rhythm of the old Sinatra tune. He crooned the first line.

  “Luck be a lady tonight.”

  And then nudged Foster expectantly.

  “Luck be a lady tonight,” Foster repeated, speaking more than singing the line.

  But Tate nodded reassuringly, picking up the tempo and starting to walk forward, doing a little sliding dance step, while he snapped his fingers.

  From beside him, Foster’s strong, pretty voice picked up the next line.

  “Luck if you’ve been a lady to begin with…”

  Tate took both of her hands and began guiding her into a swing as he joined her singing “Luck be a lady tonight!”

  They’d made their way to the beginning of the fields, all filled with ripening pumpkins and squashes, and Tate saw Foster’s eyes get huge as she stared over his shoulder at the the whining, rain-wrapped wall of wind and destruction.

  “Sing it with me, Foster!” Tate shouted over the storm. Together their voices raised in harmony.

  “Luck be a lady tonight!

  Luck if you’ve been a lady to begin with…”

  That’s when Tate heard it. The air around them quieted and stopped screaming in anger. Instead it picked up the melody and began to wrap it around them in shades of yellow and pink and blue.

  “It’s working, Foster! Don’t look, just sing and dance with me!”

  Foster’s green eyes found his, and he smiled at her, trying to show her with his touch and his expression how much faith he had in her.

  And she did it. Foster nodded and sang as he moved her around the soggy, pumpkin-filled field while the air around them was colored by happiness and filled with music.

  “Luck be a lady tonight!”

  As they paused before the next lyrics, Tate met Foster’s gaze and dropped her hand. “Now, air! Sing with us!” He lifted his hands then, just like he’d seen her doing earlier that day, making little upturned, flicking motions with his fingers as he sang the next lines.

  “Luck be a lady tonight!”

  Tate could hardly believe it. He wasn’t even really thinking about the tornado, just about the song and how cool it would be if air played along with him—and as he flicked his fingers up, the funnel stopped descending. He heard Foster’s gasp from beside him, then her hands were raised, once again maestro-like, and she, too, was moving her fingers in time with the melody as she sang with him.

  “Yeah, Foster! We’re doing it!”

  She sang the finale notes with the lyrical timing of a perfect Sinatra swagger. He lifted her, spinning her around with him while the music began to fade. Then, breathing heavily, they finally looked up at the sky … and the funnel, in perfect time to the end of the air music, disappeared into the roiling wall of clouds.

  Tate laughed joyously. “Foster! It’s working!”

  “It’s fantastic! But it’d really be nice if the wind dried up this rain and sent it to, uh, Seattle,” Foster quipped, grinning up at the sky as she squinted her eyes against the droplets.

  As if she’d pressed a mute button, the rain shut completely off.

  “That’s perfect!” Foster giggled. “Thank you, wind!”

  “And I think it’d be great if that wall cloud cleared off, so the sky could be like it was earlier today—super clear and super pretty.” As Tate spoke he made motions in the air, kind of like he was wiping off the whiteboard where his dad used to draw the team’s plays.

  The clouds began dissipating immediately.

  Then Foster wasn’t shivering anymore as the air around them settled, softened, and warmed.

  “That’s awesome!” Tate said. “But there’re still more clouds back there that need to clear up.” Tate lifted his arms higher, focusing on the bruise-colored cumulous mountains of water and dust particles that billowed ominously in the distance. “Hey, there’s no need to be so pissed off,” he told the clouds. “Be chill like the Rat Pack. Everything’s okay.” As those distant clouds began to flatten and fade away, Tate could hardly contain his joy. They were doing it! They were controlling this disaster! As his happy thought formed, Tate felt himself being cradled by air and, ever so gently, he lifted—going up, up, up like he might join the last of the clouds playing across the sunset sky.

  He lifted higher, and then higher, until he was hovering just beneath the roofline of the barn-like store.

  “Tate! Be careful!” Foster was looking up at him with a mixed expression of worry and delight.

  “It’s fine! This is cool!” Tate wasn’t afraid, and he was shocked that he wasn’t because he’d thought about it, a lot actually, since the day air had dropped him on his butt. And his thought was
that he was definitely not Superman, and any flying should be left to Superman.

  Yet there he was, hovering a good twenty feet or more in the clearing air, and loving every moment of it. He spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the glistening strands of the air superhighway that was all around him, which is when it happened.

  First, he felt it. It was a sensation he’d never had before, and it started in his hands—his widely outstretched hands. The only thing that came close to what was happening to them was how his foot felt if he sat on it too long and it went to sleep, but the sensation wasn’t an awful one. It wasn’t painful, though it was weirdly numbing. Not understanding what he was feeling, Tate glanced at his right hand.

  It wasn’t there!

  It was gone!

  Tate fisted his fingers, squeezing hard. He could feel his hand responding—squeezing, but he saw nothing there but air and sky.

  Tate’s gaze flew to this other hand. It, too, was missing—as well as a part of his left forearm.

  A terrible foreboding skittered down Tate’s spine.

  “Tate?”

  He looked down at Foster and found his voice. “Something’s happening to me! I’m—I’m disappearing.”

  He saw her eyes widen and her brows shoot up to her auburn hairline as she looked from one side of his body to the other … from one disappearing hand to the disappearing arm attached to it … to the other.

  Tate’s breath was coming fast. His hands felt cold. Really, really cold. Need to get down … need to get down … need to get down … The words were a silent litany in his mind, but his body didn’t move. The air didn’t obey him, and his right forearm began to disappear.

  “Tate.”

  He heard her voice, but he couldn’t take his eyes from his disappearing arm. He was afraid if he looked down, the next time he glanced back at himself he’d have no arm … no arm at all.

  “They’re not there, but I can feel them,” Tate shouted, hoping Foster could hear him. “They’re there—I promise! But I … but I…”