“Bethany.” A soft voice whispered of in the distance. I chose to ignore it due to the fact that something very interesting had attracted my attention. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, it was orange and fuzzy, his hair was wild and it came to a point at the top of his head. It looked almost like the fuzzball from Chicken Little. It slowly turned around and when it made I contact with me it shrieked a high pitch scream. The noise was earsplitting, it was causing agony and was still loud even with my hands over my ears. The sound then turned into the roar of a train, exactly like the sound of a tornado.
“Bethany!” yelled the voice again, but inside my head. I bolted straight up and was greeted by Madison.
“Morning.” she said in a cheery way and opened the curtains to reveal the blinding sun, I squinted and put the pillow over my head.
“Excited for your first day?” I mumbled, as she pulled the pillow off my face.
“Ecstatic!” she said and put jazz hands beside her face and smiled an open smile. I couldn’t help but laugh. I persuaded myself out of bed. Quickly and roughly I combed through my mop of hair until it was somewhat straight, more like wavy, its natural form. All that was in the mirror was my pale face with dark circles underlining my hazel eyes. I felt like a nervous wreck after all that’s happened, need I remind myself. There was quick, urgent knock at the door.
“Madison! Will you get the door?!”
“Sure!” she replied. I put on a dab of lip gloss and shoozed my hair and walked out of the bathroom, then surprisingly greeted by the whole team. Max had the radar set up on his computer. A textbook supercell was heading towards Pottsboro. Fear, adrenaline rushed through me as I thought of our house, all of our friends, endangered by the oncoming supercell. It was only 10:30 in the morning and none of it made sense for something so powerful to start so early.
“Let’s move.” I commanded. Shoving everything in my bag Max threw something and it landed across my stuffed bag. It was silver locket in the shape of a heart. It had a tiny rhinestone in the center and five marks were scratched out of it forming a star shape. I opened it up and two black and white photographs were inside of it. The one on the left was my parents at their wedding day and the other was of a baby and her family, me as a baby and my family. There was an open mouth, no-tooth grin on my face and smiles from my mom and dad.
“Thank you.” I whispered. He took one of my hands in his.
“It’s from your grandma, she found it.” he responded. Madison grabbed her stuff and we filed out the door. I shut the door and made my way after everyone down the hallway. My bag in one hand, and my locket in another. The sun shone brightly on the parking lot and there was already heat waves coming off the parking lot. Daniella and I climbed into the “Texas28”. Max and Jack in “The Navigator”, and everyone else in their cars. My keys were in the ignition and the engine vroomed.
“Max, let’s take as many back roads as possible, we can speed on those!” I directed into the radio. “Daniella, I need every radar on.” she nodded and pulled up every different type of radar possible. Two different velocity settings and two radio wave settings, and one hail measurement. As I glanced back I saw all of the different colors of all the radars and a red box outlining each of them, tornado warning. By second nature my foot floored the gas pedal and we were driving through country ranches. Instead of enjoying the scenery, all I could think of was the damaged homes we would see after all the tornadoes that would strike.
After about 30 minutes, we had to stop and rest, but I didn’t want to. As much as I wanted to stay calm, I couldn’t. My friends were in Pottsboro, everyone I cared about was in Pottsboro and what would happen to them? All of their lives would be affected by this one gust of wind in ten seconds. Once Daniella came out from the gas station, I barely gave her time to buckle before we were once again on the highway. Straight ahead of us was the anvil cloud in which everything was coming from.
A bang filled the air and the “Texas28” tilted on the right side. Frustrated I pulled over and found out we had lost a tire. My hands were so close to ripping my hair out. As if we didn’t have enough to deal with. This entire three hours of my morning were almost like hell came to earth. All I wanted to do was run and hide and just wait until all of this madness was over. Almost all of hell was about to break lose in Pottsboro and we were stuck in frickin’ Durant, OK. 40 flabbergasting minutes from soon to be death city.
“The Navigator” pulled over and both of the boys hopped out. Max examined where the tire had fallen out. Hesitantly he climbed under the vehicle. I began pacing back and forth. Sooner rather than later he climbed back out with the spare tire flat against his chest. Jack picked up the tire and pushed it in, for a second he was struggling and all my hopes sank. The tire was too big and we’d wobble the rest of the way home, but that was better than being 30 miles away from home while your friends and family were being changed in ten seconds of their life. It was almost dark and I hated driving at night, no matter who I was with. My fear of driving at night was incomparable. I always felt like I would fall asleep and would be rammed into by a truck or a ford.
We all climbed back into our cars and I began to drive slowly. The car moved up and down. I began to realize that we’ve only been inside one tornado, and that was a fail. During the past three days I expected at least four tornadoes intercepted, not one.
My thoughts were interrupted. It all happened to fast. A stop sign appeared out of the blue. The breaks screeched to a halt and I was in the middle of the road. An SUV came swinging around the corner and rammed right into the side of the “Texas28”. My body was jerked to the left and I blacked out. I could’ve sworn something hit my ear.
