TYLER OWENS: There should be a caravan waiting for you out front. Team's ready to meet you.
FRANKIE: Thanks, Tyler. See you soon.
FRANKIE wasn't used to flying — really, she would have rather drove up from Louisiana in the Camry that she deemed her company car, but Tyler Owens insisted she didn't bring it in the middle of the outbreak. He had been gracious enough to allow her to join his team for the week, so Frankie took his advice and bought the plane ticket. Besides, she loved the Camry too much to see it fly away.
From above, Oklahoma blended in with all the other terrain she was used to seeing. The layover in Dallas was a headache and it took two hours before she was on track and headed to Oklahoma City, by which point in time she was hungry, sweaty, and downright irritated. The man next to her on the plane kept gasping at the turbulence, and he was listening to his movie so loud through his headphones that Frankie could hear every word. The last way she wanted to spend a two hour flight was watching Cats against her will.
Finally, when the plane touched down in the final city, Frankie couldn't wait to get the hell off of it and onto the tarmac. She practically ran down the aisle as soon as the doors were open, grabbed her hilariously oversized luggage from the carousel and stood stupidly looking for whoever Tyler was talking about.
Soon, she spotted a bright yellow sign that had her name written across it in shaky lettering, and followed it to a small group of people dressed in camouflage and every bandana in the county.
"Hi," she spoke timidly as she walked up, fixing her sweatshirt so they could see the HazardTrack logo boldly emblazoned across her chest. Her eyes get caught on the man standing there with a green bandana tied around his neck, curly hair sprouting from underneath a ball cap. His cheeks were pink and his lashes were so long they brushed his eyelids. "I'm Frankie Dupont; do you work with Tyler Owens?"
"Yes ma'am," the one girl said, donning a bright shirt and harem pants.
The one with the bandana around his neck looked up at her, a million dollar smile spread across his face, "welcome to America!"
Frankie furrowed her eyebrows, utterly confused. "What?"
"Welcome... to America, from France?"
"She's not french, dumbass," the other person, wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt rolls their eyes. "Tyler said she can speak French."
Frankie couldn't help but laugh then, raising her hand to cover her lips as she looked away, but the giggles couldn't help but sprout out. "I'm from Lousiana. But thank you, darlin'."
"I'm Boone," he says, sticking his hand out with fervor. Frankie takes it gently, noticing his calloused palms and cracked fingernails. It reminded her of her dad, after a long day of working on the Rigs. "This is Lily and Dani. We're your ride."
"Great. It's nice to meet y'all," Frankie smiles brightly at the other two, hoisting her carry-on up on her shoulder and giving her luggage a kick to get it tilted and ready to drag.
Boone can't help but take it from her hands, though. "What kind of gentleman would I be to let you carry this heavy bag all the way to the van?"
Frankie smiles and nods at him, letting him drag the bag instead. It's in those moments, though, that she's reminded of all the guys and girls scattered across America that are too much like Boone and so much different than him all at once — the ones she slept with in motel rooms and cars and airport bathrooms, just trying to get her rocks off on her tour around disaster zones. Pent up stress isn't good when you're storm chasing, she learned, so she let the stress out by laying with warm bodies.
Boone, he was different though. Extroverted enough to say what was on his mind, but timid in the same sentence. And if there's one thing Frankie likes, it an anomaly.
Shaking her head, she looks across the parking lot and sees the caravan waiting for them. This week is not about boys — this is about her collecting data and helping families. Everything has to wait.
Even if he is mighty pretty.
—
NEW ORLEANS, 2005
They're standing in the attic and it's the last room of the house that's not flooded. The bottom floors filled up days ago, and Frankie's momma is shaking with the thought of their water-logged house holding up the two of them any longer. It's sunny now, the storm passed by four days ago, and it took her daddy with it.
They saw on TV that if you were stuck in the evacuation zone to get on your roof and write who was in your house, in whatever you had. They tried to get outta town but the traffic was too much and they didn't really have no where to go. It was always just the three of them, really. Frankie and her momma watched as he climbed onto the roof that day, thinking they had the time before the worst of it hit. He started writing in red house paint 9 YR OLD & 2 AD-
He didn't get to finish the words before the power line fell, knocked him off the roof, and into the floodwater.
It happened so quick, Frankie didn't even have time to process it before her momma was jamming her in the second level bathroom, shoving bags of oyster crackers into her hands. Her dad was there one minute, gone the next — is that really how simple death can be? Isn't it supposed to be a spectacle, not a blink of an eye and your whole life changes before you can take another breath?
And then they waited, and waited, and waited for help. Crawled up to higher spots everyday; on the fourth, the water reached the bed and soaked through their clothes, forcing them into the attic.
It's been nearly twenty years and Frankie still can't forget the way her stomach growled, the way her dads body sounded when it hit the water, or how her momma would carve the days into the attic ceiling to track the time passing. How the crackers tasted in her dry mouth and stuck to her tongue. How her momma wailed at night, begging God to let Frankie be found safe, begging in the same sentence for the water to take her, too.
It was hell. It was worse than hell.
Frankie wants to forget — but how can she?
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