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“What were you thinking?” My mother paced the living room while I sat on the couch staring at her feet. “Look at me!”
Reluctantly, I raised my gaze, meeting hers. “I stopped them, Mom.”
“But what if you couldn’t? What if that tornado was planned? What if it was supposed to happen?”
I didn’t have an answer for her, not one that I could share without getting grounded for life, so I shrugged.
“Nick, you have got to be careful. You are not immortal. You’re not a god.”
“I know, Mom,” I said. “But I knew this wasn’t planned...”
“-How?” she interrupted.
I clamped my lips tight and inhaled. She thought I hid the knife in my room, and I knew the next words would cause more trouble, but I had to let her know. I had to get her permission to carry it over the weekend. “The knife.”
Her eyes widened and I bit the inside of my cheek waiting for the conniption.
“The what?” Even the inflection of her voice made the hair stand up on my neck.
“The knife,” I whispered and dropped my gaze. “It’s taped to my chest and I used it to stop the storm.”
She folded into the chair opposite me almost in a rag-doll flop, her slack jaw telling me just as much as the slump of her shoulders. It was the first time in my life that I had blatantly lied to her. Half-truths and little white lies, yeah, like all the other kids I know, I’ve told them and I’ve been caught, but never a blatant lie. Before today, if she asked me a question outright, I told the truth, no matter the consequences.
However, this morning, when she asked if I had the knife with me, I lied. I told her I hid it somewhere in the house, but I wouldn’t tell her where. She wasn’t going to let me bring it to school and I knew deep down that I needed it, I just didn’t realize how important this hunk of metal really was.
“I explicitly forbade you from bringing that to school,” she snapped when she regained her composure.
I fidgeted under her angry stare. “I know, but...”
“No buts – go to your room.” She popped to her feet and pointed toward the stairs.
I learned a long time ago when she held that angry, unreasonable tone, to not argue. Arguing when she was like this was futile, and would land me in deeper trouble than I already was.
“And you’re grounded until further notice.”
I stopped and spun on the landing, my jaw open in the same manner hers had been a few minutes ago. “You can’t...”
“Yes, I can. Now go!” She continued to point toward the stairway and her face turned that deep shade of red, signaling I had pushed her too far.
I spun and vaulted up the stairs, slamming my door on any further comments. My heart drummed against my chest as my own anger built, banging and making the rest of my skin tingle. My fists clenched and instead of taking deep breaths and counting to ten like I usually did to calm my temper, I let out a roar and swept the contents of my desk onto the floor.
I wanted to scream, to hit, to destroy.
The more I smashed, the bigger the fury grew. When my tables were clear of clutter and my floor strewn with broken bits of glass and twisted metal, I finally sat on my skewed mattress, gasping for air. I scanned the room through a sheen of tears, and collapsed back on my bed feeling hollow and alone.
I don’t know how long it was before my door opened, but the bedspread behind my head was damp with tears of futility and frustration. I didn’t turn to see my mother’s expected expression, her shock and anger at my senseless destruction. I knew the look and I didn’t want to see it right now. The door closed without comment and I closed my eyes, slinging my arm across them to block out the remaining daylight.
“Nick?”
I shot to a sitting position and stared at Julia and then glanced around the room with a huff. “I guess I lost it.”
She smiled, raising her eyebrows and surveying the damage. “That’s an understatement.”
“Does my mom know you’re here?”
She glanced out the window and shrugged. “She’s down at my house unloading to my aunt.”
“Ah. Does she know I destroyed the room?”
Julia shook her head. “You really think she’d leave the house while you were freaking out?”
She had a point. If my mother had been here, she would have been in my face the moment the first item broke. “No.” I slowly sat back on the bed and wiped my face. “Can you grab the broom and dust pan in the hall closet?”
“Sure,” she said and stepped out of the room, returning a couple minutes later and sweeping a clean path between the door and the bed before handing both the broom and dustpan to me.
“Thanks.” I took the broom and cleaned up the broken glass, salvaging pictures from the ruined frames and chucking the rest. The garbage can wasn’t big enough to hold all the broken bits and I grabbed the can from the bathroom, filling that to the brim as well before replacing the few items I hadn’t smashed on the shelves. I leaned the broom against the wall along with the dustpan, and took a seat next to Julia on the bed. “How mad do you think she’s going to be?” I asked.
“I’m not sure I want to be here when she comes back,” Julia answered and bumped her shoulder into me.
I continued to stare at the broken knick-knacks and I sighed, turning my gaze to her. “You know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t really care,” I said and took her face in my hands, planting a kiss. If I was going to die in two days, I was going to go in style, without fear of reprimand.
Julia had other ideas. She pushed me away, her cheeks flushed and her breath labored like I stole it away. “What are you doing?”
I grinned and raised an eyebrow. “You said my mom was at your house.”
She smacked my shoulder and I pulled her close, giving her a full kiss like they did in the movies, tongue and all. She melted into me, her arms tightening around my neck. Her heart pounded hard enough that I felt it on my chest and as our tongues intertwined, the world disappeared.
“What the hell are you two doing?”
The screech separated us like a catapult and I was standing by the window before I could catch my breath. I met my mother’s glare, gulping the sudden lump of fear, inhaling as it burned a path to my stomach.
Trouble didn’t begin to describe this situation, and despite my earlier declaration, I found I cared a great deal and I could feel the excuses bubbling up with a tinge of bile; I swallowed it. Glancing at Julia, I took a deep breath, calming my pinging heart and preparing my ultimatum. “We’re all going to die on Monday, so I figured what the hell.”
After the words tumbled from my lips, I nearly gasped but instead I shifted my weight and stood tall, holding my ground.
“Julia, it’s time for you to go,” my mother said without breaking eye contact with me.
I wasn’t going to be the first to break eye contact, but from the sound of things, I knew Julia high tailed it out of the house faster than she had the day she first saw my father. Neither my mother nor I moved at first but the bang of the front door seemed to break her paralysis and she crossed, trying to tower over me, which was a laugh because I had at least two inches on her. Even so, she could be intimidating and she was bringing out the big guns tonight.
“You are in big trouble.”
I laughed and the sting of flesh meeting my cheek shocked me into reason. My hand flew to the hot spot where my mother slapped me and I returned my gaze to hers, conceding by taking a step back. “If you don’t let me go to the fireworks on Monday to stop the reapers, a lot of people are going to die.” I started and before she could interrupt, I added, “If I didn’t have the knife on me today, most of the kids at school would have died.” I pulled the blade from the sheath. “This stopped the tornado.”
Her gaze dropped to the shiny blade.
“It was huge, Mom. Big enough to annihilate the school and they sent it to kill me. Me, and everyone else in that school.” I lowered the knife, putting it back in the leather holder on my hip. “There were hundreds of reapers outside the school just waiting for us to die.” I paused and she shivered. I offered her a small smile as both a silent apology and to let her know I didn’t have a choice, I had to intervene. I had to stop what they set in motion. “Don’t you get it? They aren’t going to stop unless I can fix this, and if I can’t, it won’t matter much to any of us.”