I HEAR IT before the other three do. My eyes might be bad, but my ears work just fine.
By now, the sky’s gone dark above us. The wind’s picking up. Pine needles twirl around my ankles, and the young leaves above us are turning over, showing us their palms. Waving at us in warning.
The black mass of clouds is strung out low between both hills like a canopy. It obscures the gridwork of Windale down on the other side of the canal. From inside that mass, thunder cracks like a whip, and blue lightning flickers. It’s still a mile or so west of us, but it’s moving quickly.
And there’s that noise I can’t describe. It starts off as a whistle, low and steady. Then it builds. Getting louder, getting higher.
Gabe, Kim, and Sonya don’t seem to notice. Sonya’s busy chasing Coke bottles and empty Ziploc bags around the clearing, trying to stuff them haphazardly back into the cooler. Gabe has the Polaroid, which has been around his neck since I tossed it to him at the boulder. He’s snapping photos of the storm. I watch the film spit out from the front of the camera like white square tongues. He plucks each one without taking his eye away from the viewfinder. The stack collects in his hand, all the images gray, underdeveloped.
“This is so cool,” I hear him mutter.
“It won’t be very cool when a bolt of lightning turns you into Gabe-bacon,” I say, bending down to snatch a baggie before it can slip between my legs. “And don’t waste all my film!”
He lowers the camera, thinking about it. “Gabe-bacon,” he repeats, wrinkling his nose. “Gnarly.” But then there’s a flash behind me, and he points, clicks, waits.
I roll my eyes at him but can’t help feeling that flutter in my gut. This is an adventure. With my best friends. We’ve had so many over the years that it’s hard not to blur them all into a single bright image. There are pictures I’ve taken all over my bedroom wall at home. Us out here on Dagger Hill, dicking around for hours on end, spread out in this very clearing with comic books and magazines and maybe sometimes a stolen six-pack of my stepdad Chet’s PBR. Us in front of the Sunrise Theater in the Triangle, the marquee ringed in bright neon behind us, the movie of the week spelled out in black letters over our heads. Us in one of our bedrooms (usually Sonya’s, because her parents buy her all the coolest stuff), playing Nintendo or watching tapes on the VCR or listening to a stack of cassettes that Kimberly brought over. Us in a booth at the King Street Diner with plates of pancakes and home fries laid out between us. It’s a mosaic of memories that I put up to cover the water stains across the wallpaper, to add a layer of something happy between me and the not-so-muffled screams coming from my mom and stepdad’s bedroom. It’s a road map of my favorite moments with my favorite people at our favorite places.
And in less than a year, we’re going to hit the end of the road.
We’ve been talking for weeks about how incredible this summer is going to be. Now that Gabe has a car, we’re going to get out of town, go sightseeing. My mom and stepdad don’t give a shit what I do. For me, this summer is going to be fearless. Reckless. My friends and I are going to take these sweltering months and wring them out until not a single drop of adventure is left. This summer, if it really is our last one together, is going to be the one we remember for the rest of our lives.
Another blast of thunder snaps me back to reality. I can feel this one in my bones. An accompanying flash of lightning turns the clearing into a negative image. For a moment, I see all my friends’ faces with white lines where shadows should be, their teeth standing out stark against the blue skin of their lips. They look sickly, alien. They look like people I don’t recognize.
In the same instant, my eyesight goes back to normal, if a little spotty. But the wind is stronger than ever, gusting into my shoulders, pushing me over. I have to put my hand on top of my dad’s hat to keep it in place.
Sonya has everything in the cooler, and Gabe seems like he’s done giving the storm clouds a photo shoot. A few feet away, Kim is on her feet, staring at the darkness as it approaches. The wind blows the stray curls of her sandy blond hair around her cheeks and ears. The rest is up in a messy ponytail, held tight with her favorite blue scrunchie. There’s a weird serenity in the way she’s staring down the storm. As if it’s calming her.
More thunder rips across the sky right above us. We all flinch.
“Okay,” Gabe says. “It might be time to get back to the car.”
“You think?” Sonya asks, looking up.
But nobody moves. My feet are fused to the ground. I can’t even turn and face the storm head-on. I realize it’s because I’m afraid. Apart from the thunder and the lightning—which aren’t my favorite to begin with—there’s that other thing. That hum that keeps getting louder, almost lost in the rustle of the leaves and the howl of the wind. Almost, but not quite.
It’s building.
Finally, I manage to get my legs working. I turn and see curtains of rain sweeping over Windale like broom bristles. Currents of white lightning connect the sky to the buildings and roads of town. I think of Back to the Future, still the best movie I’ve seen this decade, even after almost four years. Down in Windale, there’s a clock fixed at the top of Town Hall. I imagine it being struck by lightning, frying it in place, stopping time in Windale forever. Maybe then senior year won’t come, and graduation after that.
Maybe then I won’t have to watch my friends leave.
It’s only a fleeting wish. There and gone again. I regain focus when the sound of squawking birds and flapping wings fills the air somewhere above us. I look up, peering into the cloud cover, and all I see are tiny dark shapes moving in the gloom. Hundreds of them, heading east, racing away from the storm.
Or from something else.
Then that whine becomes a moan becomes a screech becomes a scream becomes a roar. The dark shape of something way bigger than a frightened bird appears within the storm clouds, backlit by blue stutters of lightning. It’s only a shadow for a moment before it bursts out of the mist, real and tangible, barreling right at us. The sound of it swallows up all other sounds. The storm is a far-flung memory. So is our summer.
This is when everything changes.