The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes by Randi Davenport

Author:Randi Davenport
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2010-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

When Chase and Haley and I left the Midwest for North Carolina, we fled like a family escaping a haunted house. We packed up the truck and we packed up the car and Zip agreed to drive the truck south along the interstate behind us, and then over the mountains into Virginia and then North Carolina, where I’d learned there were programs that might help Chase. The kids and I climbed into my old blue car and even though it was four in the afternoon, I said, “Let’s go. We can make Ohio before dark.” I wanted to put miles and miles between us and that small town, miles and miles between us and the dead marriage, miles and miles between us and the family that failed, and the only way to do that was to get moving. So I drove hard and fast and got us out of there. I didn’t even want to look in my rearview mirror, in case whatever it was had made good time and was gaining on us. But it wasn’t some ghost that packed itself up in the box of children’s books in the truck that followed us. It was a nameless thing, this thing that was whatever was wrong with Zip and Chase, the thing that was milder in Zip that had bloomed in Chase. I didn’t realize what it was I was trying to run from then because I hadn’t yet seen it at its worst, I hadn’t seen Chase at sixteen. When I ran from the Midwest, I thought if I took the kids south and we started over, I could leave what we’d been through behind.

We drove until six and then pulled over at the hotel just over the border in Ohio where I’d reserved a room for us. Zip waited, idling the truck engine, while I went into the office and got a key. The place smelled damp and boggy and I didn’t feel optimistic about the room. When I opened the door and Chase and Haley pushed past me and threw themselves on the bed, I smelled stale smoke and something dank and wet and, below that, the faint aroma of urine.

“Come with me,” I snapped. “Don’t touch anything. We aren’t staying.”

I put the kids back in the car and buckled them up and told Chase to please, please, just sit still, and I locked the car doors and walked across the dark parking lot to the truck, where Zip leaned and smoked. He turned to look at me as I approached and I called, “Can you drive some more?”

“What?” he said. He flicked the cigarette into the drainage ditch beside the parking lot. A damp breeze blew his dark hair across his face. Across the street, a Big Boy and a Dunkin’ Donuts began to glow brighter in the dusk.

“I want to get out of here,” I said. “The room’s disgusting. Besides. We can make another three or four hours before we stop. The kids will sleep.

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