𝖸𝗈𝗎 𝖫𝗈𝗈𝗄 𝖫𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝖸𝗈𝗎 𝖫𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝖬𝖾

ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ

Those who say, "time heals all wounds" obviously haven't faced a real traumatic experience. It's been five whole years since that day, the day Mae watched three of her best friends get swept away before her very eyes into the dark twisting cloud of destruction.

The day Kate and her clutched onto each other and that overpass screaming in terror, thinking they were going to die. The day Javi was forced to watch as his best friends drove into a storm that only two of them made it back from, completely powerless.

Years may have passed, but to Mae Harding it still feels like yesterday. The jagged 6 inch scar that went across her stomach and sleeping pills in her medicine cabinet served as a constant reminder of that day.

Mae had spent 3 days in the hospital before she was released to go home, Jo and Bill barely let her out of their sight for the first couple of weeks and as much as she appreciated their concern she was slowly losing her mind.

She had plenty of visitors during those first few weeks where she was strictly on bed rest while her incision healed. All of her parents friends showed up doing their best to make her feel better. Javi spent almost every day over at the Harding house, somehow he and Mae grew even closer basically siblings now.

But Kate, that was a different story. She was so consumed with her own grief and guilt that she couldn't function. Cathy Carter had done all she could to try to help her daughter, but in reality she had no idea what she was going through or how to get through to her.

Jo was able to help Kate a little, since she had lost her father to an EF5 when she was a child. Even though she was young when it happened, it still stuck with her to this day.

But really the only ones who understand exactly how the other feels are Mae and Kate. Not even Javi can quite understand their pain because he wasn't there with them, literally running for their lives and desperately trying to win the fight against the raging storm that had stolen the lives of their three friends.

Somehow all three of them made it to graduation. They walked across the stage together but Mae couldn't help but notice the three empty chairs that should've been occupied by Jeb, Addy, and Praveen.

Immediately after graduation Kate moved to New York, she got offered a job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and didn't hesitate to accept. It was obvious she wanted to be as far away from tornados as possible.

Mae can't say that she blames her, what they went through was nothing short of a nightmare.

Being woken up every night by her own screams as night terrors plagued her dreams, was not something Mae envisioned she'd be going through.