Secret of the Storm by Beth McMullen

Author:Beth McMullen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18 YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS. I BARELY BELIEVE THIS.

I SHIFT THE ICE PACK around on my face, trying to find a comfortable position. It turns out there isn’t one. Joe waits, tapping his foot impatiently, while shoveling warm peach pie into his mouth. “So?” he prompts.

“Promise me you won’t say anything until I’m done?” I ask. My voice is all nasally from my injured nose.

Joe puts his fork down slowly. “Okay,” he says. “I promise. Go ahead.”

I begin with the invite to the sleepover, how I had just seen Sheldon Slack across from City Hall when Mia and her friends showed up.

“Why did you say yes?” Joe asks.

“You said you wouldn’t interrupt,” I reply.

“But she’s mean to you.” When he says it, it seems so simple, not representative of the complicated feelings that churn around in my gut when it comes to Mia. And I haven’t even gotten to the bad part yet.

“It’s actually worse than me just going to her house,” I say. “Now be quiet.”

Joe grumbles but stuffs his mouth with pie. When I get to the part about the video on Lila’s phone, the video of him, I pause, unsure how to explain that I didn’t defend him. I didn’t stand up and demand they cease and desist, and I didn’t leave the party on principle. But the weight of it is too much, so I just tell the truth. “There was a video of you,” I say quietly. “On social media. You were talking to yourself in the hallway, and the kids who filmed it, well, they were saying things. Mia and those guys were playing it over and over.”

Joe casts his eyes down at his feet. “Did you get kicked because you tried to defend me?”

This question cuts deep. No. I didn’t say anything. But next time, if there is a next time, I swear I will. Instead of telling him that, I sidestep. “We ended up in Mia’s bedroom,” I continue. “And then one of those storms happened.”

“Oh yeah,” Joe says, spraying pie crumbs all over the place. “That was right when everyone was leaving for the game! Mom said that we might have to move if this keeps up. She finds little tornadoes popping up all over the place unsettling.”

“Yeah. But this is the part where it gets kind of… strange.” Understatement of the year! I explain how Albert appeared at Mia’s bedroom window, two stories up, out of nowhere.

Joe can no longer contain himself. “How did he get there? How did he know how to find Mia’s house? That is one hundred percent impossible!”

Wait until he hears the rest. He won’t have a percentage for how impossible it is. “You said you wouldn’t ask questions until I was done,” I say. “But you keep doing it.”

“I did. Sorry. Go on.”

“Where was I? Albert appeared. Somehow he was there, and the girls started to give me a hard time about him. They thought I brought him with me or something. And

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