We Speak in Storms Read online

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 by Natalie Lund.

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Lund, Natalie, author.

  Title: We speak in storms / Natalie Lund.

  Description: New York: Philomel Books, [2019] | Summary: When a tornado strikes fifty years after another killed many teens in tiny Mercer, Illinois, some of the dead unite with misfits Brenna, Joshua, and Callie to seek peace. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018049758 | ISBN 9780525518006 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525518013 (e-book) Subjects: | CYAC: Dead—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Tornadoes—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L8487 We 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049758

  Ebook ISBN 9780525518013

  Edited by Liza Kaplan.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my mother, who has always believed

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  On October 7, 1961

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Those of Us at the Drive-In

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  More Than Fifty Years Ago

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  We Are Woven Together

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Time Isn’t Something

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  We Think Storms Are Beautiful

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  We Remember Eleanor Rocking

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Some of Us Fawned

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  A Few of Us

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Many of Us Watched

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  When We Were Teenagers

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Days Ago

  Chapter 35

  Most of Us Didn’t

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Eventually Our Town Watchman

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Detonator Dorothy Dropped

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Many of Us Remember

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Some of Us Heard

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  For Many of Us

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Frederic Vidal

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Eddie Didn’t Want to Lose

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  The Rock-A-Gals

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Facing the Past

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  We Watch

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  We Hear the Wind

  Chapter 67

  We Watch It Snow

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Somewhere in Those Howling

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  ON OCTOBER 7, 1961

  On October 7, 1961, some of us snuck from our houses, climbing onto roofs, dropping into bushes. Some of us called to our parents: We’ll be at the movies. See you later. We ignored the sharp wind, the chill that ran along the collars of our letterman jackets and the tops of our ankle socks. We loaded the pickup beds with quilts and pillows and packs of beer stolen from our fathers’ basements. Or we piled into cars with our sweethearts, unable to keep our hands still, our skin from buzzing.

  We drove into the country and parked our Catalinas, Coupes, VWs, and LeSabres in neat lines, mirror to mirror, facing the two-story whitewashed wall. We checked our watches, ordered pop from the waitresses, and made final trips to the outhouse, a few of us glancing warily up at the clouds. The projectionist started Breakfast at Tiffany’s, wobbly at first, the image gritty, and then, finally, everything was steady. Above us: our stars. We climbed into the back seats to neck with our sweethearts, happy in the shadows. Or we sprawled with our friends in the truck beds like sleeping puppies, backs on knees, shoulder blades on stomachs, legs on legs. The movie’s light playing out on our faces, in our eyes.

  The wind grew stronger, and those of us outside pulled the blankets up to our chins and scooted closer to one another. The rain was next, pelting the cars’ steel roofs. We squeezed into truck cabs, sitting on one another’s laps, or we continued to fog rolled-up windows, kissing furiously—as though we knew time was almost up.

  The movie stopped. A bullhorn announced something, the voice lost in the wind. Cars started for the exit, but it jammed. Some of us watched through blurred windows and waited, thinking the storm would pass.

  Then, abruptly, the rain stopped. We laughed at our fear and clamored for the projectionist to start the movie back up. We failed to notice that the night sky had become the color of jade. Even though we’d grown up in the Midwest, most of us had never seen a tornado. Not up close. Not with its great, wide spin, its tapering cone. We’d never heard the roar, the rumored freight-train scream.

  Not u
ntil that moment.

  We panicked, put our cars in reverse, and drove madly through the field, ignoring lanes and rights-of-way. There were crashes. Some of us spilled from our cars and sprinted for the snack bar, the outhouse, the ditches. There were those of us who screamed and those who froze, facing the tornado.

  We were a whole generation of Mercer. We were sons and daughters, born at the end of our parents’ war. In a few years, we were supposed to go to college, join the military, marry, or stay home to help with the farm. We were supposed to leave and come back or never leave at all. We were supposed to raise children here, love them like we were loved, teach them loyalty to the town and its lore. Our children were supposed to sneak out of houses, pile into pickups, and watch their own stars. It was supposed to be a cycle, we thought. On and on and on.

  How were we to know.

  Brenna Ortiz reclined on her bed, blowing smoke out the window and listening to the storm. Raindrops clung to the screen grate, quivering, before freckling her pillowcase and forehead. A Big One, the weatherman had said that morning. They were always predicting the next Big One. Part of living somewhere like Mercer, Illinois, with all those graves marked October 7, 1961. But there hadn’t been another Big One, not really. A few wall clouds, some funnels, but nothing touched down, no fields of bodies and mangled cars. Not since that day.

  It thundered, and Brenna ashed the cigarette. They were the brand Colin smoked, the kind you roll between your fingers to crush the menthol crystal. Colin was her Person, but Colin didn’t seem to feel the same way about Brenna. I like you, sure, he’d said right before summer ended, but this isn’t going anywhere. It didn’t matter that they’d dated for a year; he was heading off to college in the Quad Cities, and she was only a rising junior in high school. He wanted to be with someone who was in the same life stage as him. In fact, he’d admitted, he’d already met someone in the same life stage. That phrase wasn’t just about age, Brenna knew. There was something coded there, something that leaked from beneath.

  Earlier that day, at school, someone had written Brenna Ortiz = SLUT on the bathroom door. Brenna’s best friend, Amy, had written Bitches be jealous beneath because she liked to clap back, but Brenna knew it wouldn’t make a difference. She’d been called that name since she broke up with her first boyfriend in seventh grade. It didn’t matter what she’d done or hadn’t done with him; Brenna Ortiz would always = slut, dirty, illegal, lazy, wetback—just like her mom. It pained Brenna to wear these labels, words affixed to her by people who couldn’t look beneath her skin and didn’t know the first thing about who she really was.

  With Colin, though, people had looked at Brenna differently, especially her teachers. Dating Colin had made people look at her—like there was something to her, something that had attracted the sharp, witty, worldly Colin, something that might get her out of Mercer or even the Midwest. But without Colin, Brenna was back to being the poor girl who lived in the bright-yellow shotgun house by the cemetery; the mediocre student; the daughter of the Ortiz family’s black sheep; the half Mexican who hung out with the goths because her hair was nearly black to begin with and the white face powder was thick enough to make her blend in. The slut, the dirty, the never good enough.

  Almost in agreement, the tornado siren whined, crescendoing. Brenna’s house didn’t have a basement. At school, they’d practiced lining up in hallways, noses to knees, hands clasped behind heads. You had to find interior walls. You had to duck and cover. It could be the Big One. The music her older brother, Manny, was playing thumped in the living room without pause. Through the vent, she could smell cheap weed and a pizza he was baking, clearly convinced he’d live long enough to eat it.

  Her phone buzzed and her heart quickened, Pavlovian. But it was her mother; it hadn’t been Colin for a month now. Tornado warning. Bring your mattress to the bathtub. Colin over? Manny home? U guys ok?

  Brenna flinched. She still hadn’t told her mother about the breakup—not that she’d had many opportunities. Her mom worked nights at the gas station by the library and was asleep when Brenna woke for school. But shame kept her silent too. Colin had finally realized what everyone else already thought: she was beneath him.

  Brenna rolled her head back on the pillow and looked out the window. The sky resembled Mercer’s canal: oily black, with swirls of scum and sediment.

  I’m fine. It’s nothing, she typed, but before she hit send, something unspooled in the sky, dropping its loosened threads toward the ground. Brenna flipped onto her stomach and inched closer to the window. It was in the country, maybe a mile away, and appeared to be spinning slowly, almost lazily, like soap settling around the tub drain.

  This is it, she thought, an ache pulsing in her temples. She missed Colin, yes. She felt worthless, yes. But this was more than that. This was something that made her want to press her face to the screen and seep through. She wanted to open her arms to the funnel, wanted to be like those moviegoers decades ago. She wanted the wide, wild thing to know her.

  Joshua Calloway’s window was open, even though he had to pin the sketchpad’s pages down with his forearm so they wouldn’t flap in the wind. Beneath his arm was a rendition of Nightcrawler. Joshua liked to draw people he knew as Marvel comic book characters, usually X-Men. His mother as Jean Grey. His science teacher, Mr. Nelson, as Beast. His little sister, Ruthie, as Storm. This Nightcrawler had Joshua’s own mussed red hair, thick-framed glasses, and face—slimmed down. Nightcrawler crouched, about to spring, a tail curling up over his shoulder, his long fingers and toes splayed. Joshua had shaded Nightcrawler’s skin so that the character blended into the background shadows. Being invisible was Nightcrawler’s strength.

  Joshua’s invisibility was something different altogether.

  At school, he no longer had to sandwich his comics between textbook pages. It didn’t matter how long he admired the illustrated male bodies: all muscle and grimace. It didn’t even matter that he’d crossed 280 on the scale. There was no one to hear the table joints squeak as he sat down, or to notice the red line that the Formica tabletop left on his stomach. Everyone’s eyes skated past.

  Sometimes Joshua heard words that he thought were about him: nerd, homo, fat, fag, but, when he looked around, no one was watching him, no one whispered into their hands or ducked behind brick columns. He was the embodiment of the elephant in the room.

  Ruthie, who was thirteen, told him he should be glad: At least they’re not shoving you against the lockers anymore. His mother agreed: You’ve taken away their power by coming out. And maybe he had, but he’d pictured it all going so differently. He’d still be bullied, sure, but he’d be a hero, too. Someone whom the closeted teens of Mercer looked to for inspiration. Someone who rallied supportive teachers and open-minded friends. Joshua had dreamt about it: the clubs he’d start, the connections he’d make with organizations in the nearby Quad Cities, the speeches he’d write if he and his new friends were barred from prom. But it hadn’t been like that. He’d somehow descended the social ladder so much that even the bullies didn’t see him. He’d become Joshua the Invisible.

  The rain picked up, curling the corners of his drawing. Joshua’s ears popped as he slid the window down. Changes in pressure were a sign he’d been taught to recognize in a school video. Ears pop? Find a place to drop! Some safety lessons were even accompanied by an animated box of popcorn, a twisted reference—in Joshua’s opinion—to the drive-in tragedy of 1961.

  Sure enough, the siren sounded, long and mournful, like a whale call—followed by his mother’s holler from the bottom of the stairs: “Basement. Now!” Joshua knew—everyone in their hick town did—that it was the anniversary of the 1961 tornado. You’d be crazy not to take shelter.

  Joshua was the last of his family to descend into the unfinished basement. Ruthie was crouched beside their mother amid the stacks of toilet paper, oversized shampoo bottles, and toothpaste that they bought in bulk, winding and unwinding
a strand of hair around her fingertip. She was a redhead like Joshua, but her lashes and eyebrows were white blond and nearly invisible, rendering her perpetually surprised.

  “What’s up, dump truck?” she said without taking her eyes off her finger, her lips pressed into a playful smirk. They were only eighteen months apart—practically twins, according to their late grandfather—and Joshua wished they really were twins, so he’d have a built-in best friend and it wouldn’t matter that everyone else ignored him.

  “Evening, ginger ball,” he said.

  “Not the time, you two,” their mother said, kneeling and lacing her fingers behind her head. Joshua and Ruthie both had their mother’s freckles and hair, but they hadn’t inherited her oversized, protruding eyeballs, which they affectionately called her buggos. When they were little, they’d pretended they were insect-humans birthed by her, a praying mantis, and she’d played along, trying to catch them with her long, sticklike arms.

  Lawrence, Joshua’s stepfather, stood with his head bowed, praying under his breath. Since Joshua had come out to his family, Lawrence had acted as though his stepson’s queerness would rub off on him, ducking out of rooms and keeping his distance rather than risk being alone with Joshua. This visible discomfort, and the fact that his mother had chosen such a man, scalded Joshua inside, and he never missed an opportunity to needle the guy.

  Kneeling on the floor beside his sister, Joshua clasped his hands and stage-whispered in his best preacher drawl: “Dear God, please guide me away from this path onto which I have strayed. I have impure thoughts about men.”

  A loud guffaw escaped Ruthie, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Joshua!” their mother hissed. “Dish duty for two weeks.”

  Lawrence flushed as though embarrassed, but he ignored Joshua and sat on the other side of his wife, as far from Joshua as the crowded basement would allow.

  The wind howled, and a trash can clattered down the street, the casement windows shuddering in applause. Ruthie leaned into Joshua—ever so slightly. She flinched when something tore loose from their house with a shriek, and Joshua pressed back with his arm, trying to comfort her. Normally, he’d tease her for her fear, but instead he marveled at the boniness of her shoulder, how sharp it was in his flesh, how long it had been since they’d huddled close, since anyone had voluntarily touched him.