I swallow. There is an undeniable roar behind us. Dylan and I turn to look over our shoulders. In a streak of lighting we see a dangling twister in the distance.
We both scream and Dylan lifts her camera and turns to record it and I see a green exit sign ahead. I step on the accelerator.
“You should never try to outdrive a tornado,” Dylan shouts.
“What’s our other option? Death?” I say. The rain starts to fall harder now, mixed with hail.
“Pull over into the ditch and let me get some really great photos,” she says.
“Forget it,” I say. There’s a light in the distance, a yellow light, and I pray that it’s a gas station. A gust of wind pushes against the side of my car and for an instant it feels like the tires have left the ground.
“The good news is they only last about a minute,” Dylan shouts over the rain and whistling wind.
“Thanks,” I shout back to her as I try to outdrive the tornado on our tail. “I’m so happy to hear that.”
In the distance a single yellow light shines through the storm like a fallen star. It’s my only source of navigation.
The car wheels start to hydroplane again and I slow down long enough for the tires to catch the concrete. Dylan is still facing backwards, taking a photo documentation of the most terrifying moment of my life.
This is awful.
“This is amazing,” Dylan yells.
“Is it gaining on us?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, it looks pretty indecisive. It keeps going back and forth. It looks like it’s doing the twist. Haha, twister, doing the twist? Get it?”
I exit the highway and my car kicks up a spray of water at the stop sign. The country road is starting to flood, but I head for the yellow light. As we get closer, a farmhouse comes into view. Lights are on inside and it’s all the welcome I need.
I turn onto the gravel driveway and the wheels kick up waves of water. I turn off the car and have to push my door with both hands to open it. Dylan shoves her camera in her backpack and opens her door. I stand for just a minute and feel the odd vacuum of the wind. It’s as if the air is coming out of the ground, not from the sky.
I look for Dylan and she’s standing on the other side of the car. She’s using one hand to keep the hair out of her eyes and her other hand is pointing up at the sky. I follow her hand and in the flashes of lightening I can see two tornadoes, far off in the horizon, dancing along the ground. They spin and twist next to each other like mad lovers. I can hear the roar of the wind, like the far-off whistle of a train. It’s strange to stand here, in the rain, and know that just beyond me the world is spinning wildly out of control. Being with Dylan is like that, always balancing on the edge of insanity, like riding up the slow climb of a roller coaster and waiting for the soaring ride that follows on the other side.
The wind starts to pick up and whip the air around us. I grab Dylan’s hand before we’re yanked off the ground. We run for the porch light, our feet splashing in puddles the size of ponds in the driveway. We jump up the stairs and open the door to a screened-in porch. The door flies back so quickly in the gust of wind it nearly rips off its hinges. When we get to the front door, we don’t even have to knock.
A woman appears and smiles as if she was expecting us. She waves us inside and shuts the storm door behind us.
Dylan and I are both panting. Her hand is warm and wet inside mine. I hold it tightly, and have to remind myself to let go.
Dylan
My hand reluctantly slides out of Gray’s and I almost grab it back until I remember I’ve lost that privilege.
“You got here just in time,” the woman says. “Two tornados touched down north of here.”
“We noticed,” Gray says.
The woman introduces herself as Sue Anne. Her gray-ish blond hair is pinned on top of her head like a bird’s nest. She introduces her husband, Chris, who looks over for a second and offers us a nod, but his eyes snap back to a baseball game on the TV. They look close to my grandparent’s age.
Sue Anne asks us to take off our shoes since they’re leaving wet trails on the hardwood floors. She sets them outside the front door, in the screened-in porch. Thunder rumbles and the house moans against the gusting wind but she and Chris are as oblivious to the weather as if it were a light breeze.
Sue Anne looks between me and Gray.
“How long have you two been on the road together?” she asks.
“About two hours,” I say.
She laughs. “Interesting way to start off your trip.”
I lift one shoulder. “Turbulence appears to be my lifestyle,” I tell her and she smiles.
“Let me get you two some towels,” she offers. I thank her and look out the front window at streaks of lightening that strobe through the sky. “I think being pulled into a tornado would be a romantic way to die,” I say. “To get picked up in the air, and twisted inside a swirling cloud of energy. It might be really calm, really beautiful in the center. Or, maybe it’s a space dimension portal,” I imagine.