Janelle twisted her hair around her fingers and swallowed a bad taste in her mouth. Their house was next, and there was nothing she could say to delay the inevitable. "Dad, I can't look at this anymore."

  His lips twitched, but he said nothing as they rolled the rest of the way down the street. At last, just as the tension had built up to the point where she couldn't hold back her nerves anymore, he spoke. “Well, would you look at that,” her dad said, pulling into their driveway. “We came out pretty good in all of this.”

  His voice gave her the strength to look. Words escaped her. "What?"

  Their roof hadn’t lost any shingles. Not one. None of the front windows had cracked even though her dad hadn’t lifted a finger to board them up. Every tree remained upright in their yard, a stark contrast to the one leaning on the neighbor's house next door. All they’d gotten was a couple of little branches in their lawn.

  Sunlight reflected off her father’s glasses—and right into her eyes—as he twisted in his seat to face her. “What are you complaining about?”

  “I’m not complaining. It’s just that—” She gestured to the whole neighborhood around them. Everyone else had taken some sort of damage. Everyone. Poor Ed stood across the street, staring at the tree in his yard. It was as if, in the middle of the storm, someone had lowered a gigantic shield or force field over the house. That was impossible, but what were the chances that every piece of debris in the neighborhood would avoid their yard, and that their skinny tree out front would survive the winds next to the huge one that had fallen across the street? “We should've gotten something out of all this. The math just doesn't add up."

  “Maybe you ought to go lie down.” Her father opened the door and stepped down to the pavement. “You look tired. I’ll go see if we can do anything for anybody, so don’t be shocked if you wake up and find me gone.”

  That sounded like a great idea. The pounding in her temples threatened to go over the line to migraine status any minute. “I’d help, but I feel like a gremlin’s beating at my head with a hammer.”

  Her father unlocked the front door and gave her a pat on the back as she went in and breathed in the thick, hot air. The smell of fresh paint and cardboard filled the house, released by the heat. The power was still out, and a fresh lightning bolt of pain shot through her temple. Weaving around boxes, she made her way to her new room, closed the blinds to shut out the stabbing light, and collapsed.

  Through the pain in her head and behind her eyes, the day danced in front of her.

  Roaring wind. Snapping trees and power lines. Her father, repeating we're completely safe, Janelle, over and over until it made her want to throw up.

  The boy, with his marking that matched hers exactly.

  But she had no energy left to process it anymore. After an hour in a haze, Janelle drifted off to a swirling maelstrom of darkness, chaos, and pain.

  * * * * *

  The shrill ringing of her phone jarred her back to reality some time later. Janelle shot up and rubbed her head, but the pounding had stopped, left behind somewhere in her nightmares. She searched the dark room for her phone. A green square glowed on her bedside table. There. Stifling back a yawn, she scooped it up and raised it to her ear. “Hello?” It had to be Leslie. Her friend would always rather talk than text.

  “So, you survived? You’re okay? I’ve been worrying since you told me your dad was moving you in yesterday.”

  “Uh?” Janelle blinked a few times and recognized the voice. “Oh, hi Leslie.” She paused, trying to get her bearings. "Worried? You and me both.” Should she tell her friend about her father’s weirdness and the water vortex? The whole day felt ready to burst out of her.

  “I was so worried about you. I miss you already. Class is going to suck this year without you around to help me with Trig. Oh, well. I’ll just have to ask Todd. So, tell me all about it.”

  It was the invitation she needed to start talking. She left out the water vortex--she wasn't sure why, but it made her stomach lurch in warning when she started to tell Leslie about it--but included everything else. There was no sense in making her friend think that all her Honors classes had finally melted her brain, like she always used to say at her old school.

  Fortunately, Leslie didn't dwell too much on her weird story. After a flurry of that's so weird and that's not like your dad at all, she said, “You should go visit that guy if you can find out what hospital he’s in. Make sure he’s okay. It might help you figure out why he was out in the storm, at least. Just be careful, though.”

  “Careful?"

  "Well, what are the chances of him randomly having that mark on his arm just like yours? Maybe he's a distant relative of yours, and that gray spiral is some kind of genetic thing. That is the area your dad's originally from. So until you know, don't go asking him for dates or anything."

  She hadn't thought of that. "You can find explanations for everything, Leslie." Well, except for her dad's behavior and the fact that her house was unscathed. Even she hadn't had any logical ideas for those. "You know--that makes me feel better. Thanks. And that's a great idea. Going to the hospital, I mean. I'll ask my dad where the closest one is and see if he can take me there."

  "Guilt trip him. After the day he put you through, he won't be able to say no."

  Thirty minutes later, Janelle managed to get off the phone with Leslie. She rushed out into the living room, where she found her dad sitting on the couch and staring down into a glass of cranberry juice like it was a crystal ball ready to show him the future. A pair of emergency candles burned on either side of the table and cast a flicker on the walls. Somewhere, a drill sounded off down the street.

  He glanced up at her and swallowed, shadows dancing across his face. “I’m sorry about scaring you earlier. I don't know what I was thinking."

  This was the opportunity Leslie had told her about, and it was almost guaranteed to work. As soon as they were settled in, she'd invite her down here for a week and hit the beach. “Apology accepted. Where’s the nearest hospital?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You want to see that boy.” Would he go for it? If her dad really did remember tugging his sleeve down over his mark, it might go from an unofficial yes to a no in an instant.

  Heat crept up her cheeks. Good thing for the power outage. “I just want to see if he’s all right.” And if our birthmarks are somehow connected, she thought. “I helped drag him out of the storm. How do we know he’s not lying there in critical condition?”

  Her father put his chin in his hand and studied the floor. “He was looking better before the ambulance even came to get him. I'm sure he needs his rest, so it might not be a good idea.”

  “Come on, Dad. I don't know anyone here. If he goes to my school, it would be a good way to start making friends. It won't be easy starting in a new place without some connections."

  He sighed, deep in thought, as she plotted ways to get to the hospital without him knowing. “Okay," he said at last, as reluctant as he'd been letting her go to the movies with Leslie by herself for the first time two years ago. "He’s probably at Laverne Medical Center. That’s ten miles north of here. I’ll take you there tomorrow. It’ll be good for you to meet others, and it’ll give you a chance to see the area. Did you catch his name?”

  Good. Results. She'd have to call Leslie tomorrow and tell her the guilt trip idea was a hit. “No. Um…how are we going to find his room? Hospitals are huge. We can't just go around peeking in everyone's rooms for him.”

  “Oh, I’ll find a way.” Smiling, he pointed down the hall. “Why don’t you go get some unpacking done if you’re feeling better? It’ll make less to do tomorrow.”

  Flashlight in tow, she unpacked her large collection of books and did battle with the wires of her computer, glad for the mindless work that took away the day behind her. Her pictures came out of another box: one of her and her father working at a soup kitchen last winter, another of her and Leslie at the amusement park. The one of her mother came out last. The curly-haired woman smiled at her from in front of Lake Huron, holding up a huge fish. It was one of the only pictures of her they owned. That one had to go on her night table.

  The bandage started to itch again as she went through a box of yearbooks. She’d forgotten about it until now. Wincing, Janelle peeled it off to reveal her own birthmark. Or maybe you just think it’s a birthmark, a little voice said in the back of her mind, despite her phone call with Leslie earlier. The gray swirls she had grown used to her entire life seemed alien now, sinister in the dim light. Janelle had a sudden urge to ask her father for a cover-up tattoo, and she wasn’t sure why.

  * * * * *

  The cool shade of a palm tree washed over Janelle as her father parked beside it. Laverne Medical Center towered overhead with its seven floors. Janelle’s palms tingled with nerves. Maybe Vortex Guy would have some earth-shattering revelation about their birthmarks, if he was even here. With her luck, he’d been checked out and released to his parents already. Or maybe the mundane was true and Leslie was right, that the gray spiral was a rare gene floating around the Palm Grove area after all. That, of course, didn't explain anything else about yesterday.

  Janelle kept her musings to herself as they climbed out of the truck. She had a feeling if she brought it up to her dad, he'd find an excuse to drive them both back home.

  “I’ll go up and ask around for him. You wait here,” her father said once they’d entered the main lobby.

  “Why?” she asked. “I’m not a baby. I can do it myself. And I want to ask about volunteering here if I can, since I'll be getting my license soon.” She'd never gotten the chance back at home.

  “Just sit tight,” he said, turning away and heading for the elevator. "Don't wander off. Stay here where the security guys can see you."

  Baby. That little voice reared up in her mind again. When was he going to realize that she could do things on her own? She'd had to get perfect grades her entire student career just to keep him off her back, not to mention sign up for enough after school activities to consume most of her out-of-class life. By now, he owed her some freedom, and it seemed like she'd never get it until she moved out.

  Janelle sighed and paced around the waiting room, watching the same news stories on TV loop over and over: the crappy economy, another food recall, a big controversy over the comment of a talk show host, a celebrity in the hospital for a toe infection. Of course, Hurricane Gary made one of the slots, with two deaths already reported from the storm surge south of Palm Grove. Another meteorologist pointed out a new storm forming in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Heather, but Janelle sagged with relief when he said it was supposed to weaken and die without coming near land. Good. She didn’t need any more problems. The weatherman moved on to talk about a long drought in the Northeast when someone tapped on Janelle’s shoulder.

  “You ready?”

  Janelle whirled around to face her dad. “So is—”

  “He’s on the third floor. I went up to let him know you’re coming. I'm guessing they've done some tests on him, but he seems to be okay." He stared up at the drought story as he dug into his pocket. “Why don’t you get him something out of that gift shop over there? Here’s ten.”

  Janelle strode into the gift shop and agonized over her choices for several minutes. This was going to be her first impression, and if it turned out this guy wasn't related to her, she didn't want it to be a bad one. But why did everything have to be pink? Or flowery? Or both? She didn't even like the color, and she had a feeling that Vortex Guy wouldn't, either. Ultimately she decided on a teddy bear in a blue Get Well Soon T-shirt.

  “I hope he doesn’t think this is too girly.” Janelle pushed open the glass door as she exited the gift shop, hurrying out into the hallway. “Let’s—”

  A squeal rang out next to her, turning the heads of two passing women in scrubs. A janitor stopped to gawk, letting his trash can roll into the wall with a bang.

  Janelle turned to see what the sound was. The metal door sagged in her hand as if depending on her for support, hanging from its top hinge only. It was as if the Hulk or something had pulled it right off. She stood, stunned, unable to come up with an explanation as her father stared on, jaw falling open. “Uh…what?”

  “Oh, my.” The old woman from the gift shop counter darted out to look at the damage, then Janelle. “You’re not hurt, are you?” She took the door by the rim as Janelle let go and shook her head. “The maintenance guys just put this in last week. I’ll have to call them back down and give them an earful. Ted, can you call them down?”

  The janitor closed his mouth and reached for his phone.

  Janelle backed away and left the woman to pull the door to the side. “I am so sorry.” What else was she supposed to say?

  The woman stared at her and shook her head. "It's not your fault. It couldn't possibly have been."

  Her father’s hand came down on her shoulder, squeezing with urgency. “Let’s go. You need to be a bit more careful, honey.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious, so she kept her mouth shut as they boarded the elevator and squeezed in next to a lunch cart. A mechanical failure. She'd just pulled on the door at the wrong time. There was no other explanation, and her father walked next to her, eyes pointed straight ahead and not offering one, either.

  Janelle’s stomach rumbled at the smell of sloppy Joes, but she forced food from her mind when they came to a small visitor’s lounge a minute later.

  “Go on.” Her dad pointed to the corner ahead. “Second to last room on the right. He didn't have any other visitors, so we should be fine."

  Finally. He trusted her to do something. Janelle sucked in a breath and started down the hall. She weaved past the beeping nurses’ station and dodged past carts, to where the door to the second-to-last room stood wide open. Her throat suddenly felt very dry.

  Nobody took up the first bed, but the second one had the curtain drawn. That had to be it. Janelle swallowed over the lump in her throat and squeezed the teddy bear tighter. Great. She was going to look nervous and stutter all her words.

  A muffled female voice floated out from behind the curtain, stopping Janelle in her tracks.

  It was probably a doctor or nurse taking a blood sample. Or his mom. Well, she hoped. She stopped and gripped the plastic rail of the first bed. What if he had a girlfriend visiting him? Sure, this teddy bear thing would go over really well.

  “…disappointed in that, to say the least. You’ve completely wasted your full potential. You were doing great there for a few days, and it looked like we’d have something to celebrate, but no.” The woman tossed down something paper onto what she guessed was Vortex Guy's bed. “But when the big moment came, you just wimped out like so many of the others and—”

  “I did it. Why can’t you be happy with that?” Vortex Guy’s voice rose above hers. “I want to forget about it. Can I go back and live with my mom now?”

  Janelle took a couple of steps back and bumped into the empty bed, hoping they couldn't hear her. This sounded ugly, but at least it didn’t sound like the boyfriend-girlfriend kind of argument.

  “You know the state won’t let you, so you’re under my roof until you turn eighteen. Or maybe not,” the woman added. “I’ll pick you up sometime tomorrow. I’m sure the doctors want to run tests to rule out everything under the sun and make their money. They must think I’m loaded.” A bony hand throttled the curtain from behind.

  “Uh…you are loaded."

  The woman's voice went from annoyed to something far scarier, something with a weird undertone of growling that made Janelle stiffen like a deer caught in headlights. “Don’t talk back to me. Ever.” The hand tugged the curtain all the way back.

  Janelle’s stomach lurched, but she had no time to move.

  A short-haired blonde woman in a gray business suit stormed away from the second bed and stopped inches away as if she'd hit a brick wall. Her gaze bore into Janelle. She had eyes the color of an approaching thunderstorm, gray and dark blue at the same time. “Who are you?”

  The growl was gone, but the question felt like it was poking right into her, down to her core. Janelle suppressed the urge to run out of the room and back down the hall to her dad. Nothing about this woman made her want to stay in the room. She held up the bear and focused on keeping her voice level. “I’m here to visit him. I…I helped pull him out of the storm yesterday.”

  It was as if someone had flipped a switch inside Rude Woman. She smiled, showing all her teeth, but it wasn't the kind of smile that Janelle liked. Her gaze didn't stray, as if she were appraising every feature on her face. “Oh, I see. Feel free to take your time, sweetie. Really. It's no problem.” She hurried to the door, pulling a cell phone from her pocket and clicking her high heels on the linoleum.

  Janelle turned to watch her go. What had that mood swing been about? Had she said something to cause it?

  Now wasn't the time to dwell on it. She took a deep breath, making her heart rate slow back down to semi-normal, as she crossed the threshold to the other side of the room.

  Vortex Guy sat up in bed, stabbing at a steaming tray of hospital food with a plastic fork. Locks of black hair hung in his tanned face which must have spent a lot of time in the sun. He seemed like the kind of guy that would either join a garage band or hit the waves with a surfboard, definitely not the class jacket wearing type her dad approved of. No wonder he hadn’t been crazy about bringing her here.

  He didn't look up at her as she approached. Her chest tightened, but she pressed on.

  “Uh…hi.” Janelle crept over and set the bear down on his bedside table, wedging it between the phone and the lamp. She’d rehearsed her questions for hours this morning. Now they’d abandoned her. Gone. “I'm the one who found you in the parking lot yesterday, but I’m not sure if you remember me. My dad's Lucas Duvall. He came up right before I did.”

 

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