Serendipity

Chapter 18

The sound of rain pelting my bedroom window rips me out of sleep.

What in the world?

I sit up, startled.

I hear the sound of footsteps, and then Tyler enters my room without knocking.

"Sorry, you gotta get up."

"Why?" I ask, groggy.

"We're in a hurricane warning, they're evacuating homes."

"I'd rather die than leave the house." I say.

"Well I'm not going to let that happen. Get up. Get dressed."

Tyler

Carmen looked like she wanted to kill me for telling her to get up.

I don't care. We need to go.

Mrs. Schuler is downstairs, packing everything she can think of.

I go down there, my bags packs. Delaney and Blake are already waiting.

"Did you wake Car?" Delaney asks.

I nod.

"Oh, oh goodness, my garden, I need to preserve it!" Mrs. Schuler says.

"Amelia, the house is not going to topple to the ground." Mr. Schuler says, calm. "Calm down."

She sit around for twenty minutes, wind whistling outside.

Alarms are going off all around the town.

Carmen is still now downstairs.

Shaun is sitting, wringing his hands nervously.

Delaney goes storming upstairs.

A couple minutes later, she comes back.

"She took a fucking shower, put her hair up, and now she's dressed, umbrella in hand, shoving anything she things is savable into a suitcase."

"She really is her Mother's daughter." Mr. Schuler mutters.

We wait around, and twenty minutes later, Carmen comes downstairs, a white tank top underneath a gray jacket. It's a windbreaker.

Her wet hair is in a bun.

She's dragging like, four suitcases with her.

She sets one of them on the couch and starts going around the house, shuffling through drawers, looking for anything worth keeping.

She lifts the cusion on the couch to reveal a safe.

"I already emptied that." Mrs. Schuler says.

"Alright ladies, we need to go." Mr. Schuler says.

There's a banding on the front door, tornado sirens clouding the air.

We all load up the cars. Carmen insists on driving, and she drives very carefully.

Rain is pelting the car. Her knuckles are white trying to keep us on the road. The wind is insane.

We're all quiet, and we shut the radio off, because it's just playing the alarm sounds.

The cell service is gone, the power lines are falling into the street, Suffolk County power vans are littering the streets, trying to fix the power lines, but I see them slowly start getting into their vehicles, giving up.

Del and Blake are silent in the backseat, but I know they're nervous, because Del is holding tightly onto Blake's hand, and they're bot leaning forward slight, peering out of the windshield.