Into the Hurricane by Neil Connelly

Author:Neil Connelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

I’M SPINNING IN A STORM OF BLACKNESS AND WIND, FLIPPING around and upside down with no sense of whether I’m rising or falling. Blood rushes to my head, and it’s hard to suck in a good breath. At first, I stretch my arms way out, but then I cross them over my face and try to curl up my body, waiting on the crash that’s got to be coming. I’m hoping for water but picturing the iron girders of the bridge. But I don’t crash at all. Something whacks the back of my head—hard enough that I taste blood—but somehow I don’t die. Lightning crackles from the tumbling clouds, and I just keep on twirling away, time stretching out all dizzy, like in a dream.

But this is a dream like no other. Little by little, my spinning starts to slowly settle, sort of like the end of a wild amusement ride, and when it stops, I’m flying still. The rain is gone, and the storm has calmed. Craziest thing of all, though—even crazier than me floating like a kite—is that all the color’s been drained from the world. Below me is a sketched version of the iron bridge, etched in perfect pencil. It’s like I’m alive in some 3-D version of my black-and-white drawings.

And I’m gliding now over the intercostal waters, shaded in dusty gray swirls, and the water tower at the edge of town. I drift away from town, and before I know it, I’m passing above the shingled roof of my home and the Chenier Sanctuary. None of this makes sense, but I have the strange feeling that I’m controlling my flight through power of will. Next I’m hovering high above the houses by the Chains and then, sure enough, Lucy. Like in my sketches, the lighthouse looks strong and certain. I feel the urge to go to it, and my body descends, smooth and gentle as if I were a heron easing down into a cypress tree.

Waiting on the crow’s nest is a single figure, one I know long before I can see her face. Celeste is etched in grays and blacks, standing at the rail, gazing over a calm ocean. My feet touch down softly behind her, and above us both a thousand stars dot the clear summer sky. Years of my prayers have been answered at last, and I’m back at the night of my greatest failure. I’ve been given a second chance.

“Stop!” I shout.

My sister turns to me. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says. “Go on home.”

These lines are pulled from the script in my mind, the one that draws right from my memory. We said these same things the last time I saw her. “We should go home together. I know you’re sad, Celeste, but I need you.”

“You don’t need me, kiddo. You, you’re great. You’ve got it all covered. Just quit worrying about everything so much.”

I want to tell her how things will change after this night if she does what she’s about to do, how sad Mom and Dad will get, how alone I’ll be in a world without her.

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