Shepley
The Charger’s steering wheel whined as I twisted the wood with both hands. Rain fell from a dark blue sky, assaulting the windshield so loudly that America had to nearly yell over the noise. She was chattering a thousand words a minute, and it was all blurring together. She wasn’t mad but excited. I wasn’t mad. I was feeling unadulterated deep fucking fury. Adrenaline was still pumping through my veins, making my head throb like it was going to explode. That feeling was exactly why I wouldn’t lose my temper. It would leave me feeling sick, out of control, guilty—everything I didn’t want to be.
As the miles passed and we escaped Topeka, America’s voice came into focus.
She reached over to touch my hand. “Baby? Did you hear me? You might want to slow down. The rain is coming down so hard it’s starting to stand on the roads.”
She wasn’t afraid, but I could hear the concern in her voice. My foot lifted half an inch off the gas pedal, and I eased up, releasing the tension from my leg and then the rest of my body.
“Sorry,” I said through my teeth.
America squeezed my hand. “What happened?”
I shrugged. “I lost it.”
“I feel like I’m riding in the car with Travis instead of my boyfriend.”
I breathed out through my nose. “It won’t happen again.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw her face compress.
“Do you still love me?”
Her words were like a punch to the gut, and I coughed once, trying to catch my breath. “What?”
Her eyes glossed over. “Do you still love me? Is it because I said no?”
“You … you want to talk about this now? I mean … of course I love you. You know that, Mare. I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
She wiped an escaped tear from her cheek and looked out the window. The weather outside mirrored the storm in her eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
My throat tightened, choking off any reply I might have had. Words didn’t come to me. I alternated between staring at her in confusion and watching the road.
“I love you.” She balled her elegant thin fingers into a fist and propped them under her chin, her elbow on the door’s armrest. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about the way things have been between us lately, but I was scared … and … I didn’t know what to say. And—”
“America? Is this a … is this like a good-bye trip?”
She turned to me. “You tell me.”
I didn’t realize my teeth had been clenched until my jaw began to hurt. I tightly closed my eyes and then blinked a few times, trying to concentrate on the road, keeping the Charger between the white and yellow lines. I wanted to pull over to talk, but with the hard rain and limited sight distance, I knew it would be too dangerous. I wouldn’t take the chance with the love of my life in the car—even if she didn’t believe she was at the moment.
“We don’t talk,” she said. “When did we stop talking?”
“When we started loving each other so much that it was too scary to chance it? At least, that’s what it was for me—or is,” I said.
Saying the truth out loud was both terrifying and a relief. I’d been keeping it in for so long that letting it go made me feel a little lighter, but not knowing how she would react made me wish I could take it back.
But this was what she wanted—to talk, the truth—and she was right. It was time. The silence had been ruining us. Instead of enjoying our new chapter together, I had been lingering in the why not, the not yet, and the when. I had been impatient, and it was poisoning me. Did I love the thought of us more than I loved her? That didn’t even make sense.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, Mare,” I spit out.
She hesitated. “For what?”
My face screwed into disgust. “For the way I’ve been acting. For keeping things from you. For being impatient.”
“What have you been keeping from me?”
She looked so nervous. It broke my heart.
I pulled her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles. She turned to face me, pulling up one leg and holding her knee to her chest. She needed something else to hold on to, bracing herself for my answer. The rain-speckled windows were beginning to fog, softening her. She was the most beautiful and saddest thing I’d ever seen. She was strong and confident, and I’d reduced her to the worried big-eyed girl next to me.
“I love you, and I want to be with you forever.”
“But?” she prompted.
“No buts. That’s it.”
“You’re lying,” she said.
“From now on, that’s it. I promise.”
She sighed and faced forward. Her lip began to tremble. “I screwed up, Shep. Now, you’re just content to keep going like we have been.”
“Yes. I mean … is that okay? Isn’t that what you want? What do you mean, you screwed up?”
Her lips pressed together into a hard line. “I shouldn’t have said no,” she whimpered softly.
I exhaled, trailing off in thought. “To me? When I asked you to marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice almost pleading. “I wasn’t ready then.”
“I know. It’s okay,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I’m not giving up on us.”
“How do we fix this? I’m willing to do whatever. I just want it to be the way it used to be. Well, not exactly, but …”
I smiled, watching her stumble over the words. She was trying to tell me something without saying it, and that was something she wasn’t comfortable with. America always said what she wanted. It was one of the million reasons I loved her.
“I wish I could go back to that moment. I need a do-over.”
“A do-over?” I asked.
She was both hopeful and frustrated. I opened my mouth to ask why, but quarter-sized hail began to pelt the windshield.
“Shit. Shit!” I yelled, imagining every dent being pounded into the body. I slowed down, looking for an exit.
“What do we do?” America asked, sitting up and planting her hands on the seat.
“How far out are we?” I asked.
America scrambled for her phone. She tapped on it a few times. “We’re just outside Emporia. So, a little over an hour?” she yelled over the sound of rain and a thousand ice chunks nailing the paint at forty miles per hour.
I slowed down even more, seeing the glow of brake lights from vehicles pulled over on the shoulder. The windshield wipers were echoing my heartbeat in a fast but steady rhythm, like the dance music at The Red.
“Shepley?” America said. Worry tinged her voice like before, but she was also afraid.
“We’re going to be okay. It’ll pass soon,” I said, hoping I was right.
“But your car!”
The tail end of the Charger slipped, and I tore my hand away from America’s, using both of mine to navigate the wheel against the skid. We slid across the road, toward the median. I overcorrected, and then the Charger began to fishtail toward the ditch. Hand over hand, I turned the wheel again, taking my foot off the gas. The Charger tilted to the side, and we slipped down a short embankment before landing in a full drainage ditch.
The water crested at the bottom of my window, the grassy brown river arching and ebbing against the glass, begging to be let in.
“You okay?” I asked, holding her face in my hands, checking her over.
America’s eyes bulged. “What … do we—”
Her phone began to shriek. She took one glance and then showed me the screen.
“Tornado warning,” she said. “For Emporia. Right now.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
She nodded and turned around in her seat.
“Leave the luggage. We can come back for it. We have to go. Now.”
I rolled down my window. America took the cue, unbuckled her seat belt, and rolled down hers as well. As she began to climb out, I unbuckled but paused. The ring was in my backpack in the backseat.
“Damn it!” America yelled from the top of the car. “I dropped my phone in the water!”
The faint rise and fall of tornado sirens blared in the distance as the hail was replaced by rain.
I reached back for my bag, slipped it over my shoulder, and climbed out of my window, joining America on top. Water was sloshing over the top of the hood. America crossed her bare arms over her chest, shivering in the wind, her hair already becoming saturated with rainwater. In just a pair of shorts, a tank top, and sandals, she was dressed for a hot summer day.
I took a quick look around, assessed the water, and then jumped off. It barely came to my waist.
“It’s not deep, baby. Jump.”
America squinted her eyes against the rain.
“We have to take shelter, America. Jump to me!”
She more fell than jumped, and then I helped her across the ditch to the grassy knoll. Cars were parked on both sides of the turnpike, but not all traffic was stopped. A semi blew past us, blowing America’s hair back and soaking us with water.
America held out her arms at each side, her fingers sprawled out, her mascara running down her cheeks.
“I don’t see anything, do you?” I asked.
She shook her head, using her tank top to wipe her face. “That doesn’t mean anything though. They could have reports of circulation or lowering.”
“That overpass is closer than town. Let’s go there. We can call your parents …”
A melody of screams echoed behind us, and I glanced back to see what was going on.
“Shepley!” America screamed, looking southwest in horror, toward the RV park nestled in a patch of trees. The branches were bending, nearly to their breaking point, thrashing helplessly in the raging wind.
“Fuck,” I said, watching a cloud slowly fall from the sky.
America
Wet and freezing, I lifted my shaking hand to point toward the blue finger dangling from the clouds above. Someone shouldered past me, nearly knocking me forward, and I saw a man sprinting toward the overpass, hugging to him a toddler with pigtails and white sandals.
The turnpike led to an overpass over Highway 170. The RV park was below on one side, and a gas station was on the other side, just a quarter of a mile away.
Shepley held out his hand. “We should go.”
“Where?”
“The overpass.”
“If it goes over the bridge, we’ll be sucked out,” I said, my teeth beginning to chatter. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was cold or terrified. “The gas station is the safest place!”
“It’s closer than Emporia. Hopefully, it will miss us.”
More people ran past us toward the junction, disappearing as they descended down the hill to hide under the bridge. A truck slammed on its brakes in the middle of the turnpike, and seconds later, an SUV rammed the truck. A loud crunching of metal and glass was muted from the growing wind created by the tornado. It had grown larger in just the few seconds when I turned away.
Shepley signaled for me to wait while he jogged to the wreckage. He peeked in, took a few steps back, and then rushed to check on the driver of the truck. His shoulders slumped. They were all gone.
“You can’t stay here!” a woman said, tugging on my arm.
She held hands with a young boy, about ten years old. The whites of his eyes stood out against his dark bronze skin.
“Mom!” he said, pulling her away.
“It’s going to plow straight through here! You have to find shelter!” the mother said again, taking off toward the gas station with her son.
Shepley returned to me, taking my hand. “We have to go,” he said, turning to see dozens of people running toward us from their parked vehicles.
I nodded, and we began to run. The rain stung my face, blowing horizontally instead of toward the ground, making it hard to see.
Shepley looked back. “Go!” he said.
We ran across two lanes and then paused on the far side of the grass median. Traffic was light but still moving in both directions. We stopped for a moment, and then Shepley pulled me forward again, across both lanes of oncoming traffic and then down the on ramp toward the gas station. A tall sign overhead read Flying J. People were running from the parking lot toward the overpass.
Shepley stopped, and my chest was heaving.
“Where are you going?” Shepley asked no one in particular.
A man holding the hand of a grade school–aged girl ran past us, pointing ahead. “It’s full! They can’t fit any more!”
“Shit!” I cried. “Shit! What do we do?”
Shepley touched my cheek, worry tightening the skin around his eyes. “Pray it doesn’t hit us.”
We ran together to two bridges that allowed the turnpike passage over the top of Highway 170. Large concrete pillars loomed over us, creating the underbelly where the metal met the hillside. The crevices of both bridges were already pregnant with frightened people.
“There’s no room,” I said, feeling hopeless.
“We’ll make room,” Shepley said.
As we climbed the steep incline of the concrete hill, cars that were still crossing overhead sounded like bass drums. Parents had tucked their children into the deepest corners they could find and covered them with their own bodies. Couples huddled together, and a group of four teenage girls wiped their wet cheeks, alternating between cussing at their cell phones and praying.
“There,” Shepley said, pulling me beneath the western bridge. “It’s going to hit the east bridge first.” He led me to the center where there was a small space just big enough for one of us. “Climb up, Mare,” he said, pointing to the small lip preceding the two-feet deep concrete niche.
I shook my head. “There’s no room for you.”
He frowned. “America, we don’t have time for this.”
“It’s coming!” someone from the west bridge cried.
Shepley grabbed each side of my face and planted a hard kiss on my lips. “I love you. We’re going to be okay. I promise. Get up there.”
He tried to guide me, but I resisted.
“Shep—” I said over the wind.
“Right now!” he demanded. He’d never spoken to me like that before.
I swallowed and then obeyed.
Shepley looked around, huffing and peeling his soaked T-shirt away from his torso. He noticed a man below holding up his cell phone.
“Tim! Get up here!” a woman called.
Tim slicked back his wet dark hair, continuing to point his phone in the direction of the tornado. “It’s getting close!” he called back, smiling with excitement.
Children cried out, and a few adults did, too.
“Is this happening?” I said, feeling my heart thundering against my rib cage.
Shepley squeezed my hand. “Look at me, Mare. It’ll be over soon.”
I nodded quickly, leaning over to see Tim still filming. He took a step back and then began scrambling up the incline.
I pulled Shepley as close to me as I could, and he held me tight. Time seemed to pause. It was quiet—no wind, no crying, almost as if the whole world had held its breath in anticipation of the next few seconds. This was a moment in time that would change the lives of everyone who had taken cover under the wrong bridges.
Too quickly, peace was over, and the wind began to roar like a dozen military jets were slowly flying low overhead. The grass in the median below began to whip, and I felt like I was under a mile of water, the change in air pressure feeling heavy and disorienting. At first, I was pushed back a bit, and then I saw Tim being taken off his feet. He slammed to the ground, clawed at the concrete, and then grass before being sucked into the sky by an invisible monster.
Screams surrounded me, and my fingers dug into Shepley’s back. He leaned toward me, but as the funnel made its way to the other side of the east bridge and then ours, the air changed. Another person cried as she lost her grip and was pulled out from our hiding place. One by one, anyone not tucked inside the nook where the hill met the bridge was ripped away.
“Hold on!” Shepley yelled, but his voice was snuffed out. He used every bit of his strength to push me further into the crevice.
I felt his body pulling away from me. His arms tightened around me, but when I began to scoot forward, he released me altogether and dug his toes into the concrete, leaning into the wind.
“Shep!” I yelled, watching as his fingers turned white, pressing against the ground.
He struggled for a moment to hand me his backpack.
I slid it over one arm and then reached out for him. “Take my hand!”
His feet began to slide, and he looked up at me, recognition and terror on his face. “Close your eyes, baby.”
Once he said the words, he was gone, whipped out like he weighed nothing. I screamed his name, but my voice was lost in the deafening wind.
The air pressure changed, and the suction stopped. I ran down to the bottom, seeing a dark blue twisting rope barreling down the turnpike, tossing semis like they were toys. I crawled out, and then I ran from beneath the bridge, looking around in disbelief, feeling the sting of the rain on every inch of my exposed skin.
“Shepley!” I screamed, bending over. I held tight to his backpack, hugging it to me as if it were him.
The rain faded away, and I watched as the tornado grew in size, gracefully gliding toward Emporia.
I sprinted to the Charger, stopping at the top of the ditch. The turnpike was now a path of destruction with mangled cars and random pieces of debris lying everywhere. The wreckage from the semi and SUV were no longer there, a large piece of tin lying in its place.
Just moments before, Shepley and I had been on a road trip to see my parents. Now, I was in the middle of what looked like a war zone.
The water was still sloshing over the hood of the Charger.
“We were just in there,” I whispered to no one. “He was just in there!” My chest heaved, but no matter how many breaths I took, I couldn’t get enough air. My hands hit my knees, and then my knees hit the ground. A sob tore through my throat, and I wailed.
I hoped he would jog up to me and reassure me that he was okay. The longer I waited by the Charger without him, the more I panicked. He wasn’t coming back. Maybe he was lying somewhere, hurt. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I left to look for him, he might come to the Charger, but I wouldn’t be there.
I sucked in a breath, wiping the rain and tears from my cheeks. “Please find your way back to me,” I whispered.
Red and blue lights reflected off the wet asphalt, and I looked over my shoulder to see a police cruiser parked behind me. An officer hopped out and rushed around, kneeling next to me, and he placed a gentle hand on my back. Reyes was engraved on a bronze name badge pinned to his front shirt pocket. He tipped his blue felt hat, and the bronze star fastened to the front said Kansas Highway Patrol.
“Are you hurt?” Reyes reached out with his thick arms, wrapping a wool blanket around my shoulders.
I didn’t realize how cold I’d been until the sweet relief of warmth sank into my skin.
The officer loomed over me, bigger than Travis. He took off his hat, revealing a clean-shaven scalp. His expression was severe, whether he meant for it to be or not. Two deep lines separated his bushy black eyebrows, and his eyes sharpened as he looked down upon me.
I shook my head.
“Is that your vehicle?”
“My boyfriend’s. We took shelter beneath the overpass.”
Reyes looked around. “Well, that was stupid. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” When I said the words aloud, a new pain blazed through me, and I crumbled, barely catching myself as my palms flattened on the wet road.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the backpack in my arms.
“His … it’s his. He handed it to me before he …”
A high-pitch chirp sounded, and then Reyes spoke, “Two-nineteen to Base H. Two-nineteen to Base G. Over.”
“Two-nineteen, go ahead,” a woman’s voice said through the speaker. Her tone was flat, not at all overwhelmed.
“I’ve got a group of people who were taking shelter under the Highway Fifty and I Thirty-Five junction.” He scanned the area, seeing injured people scattered up and down the turnpike. “The tornado passed through here. Ten-forty-nine to this location. We’re going to need medical assistance. As many as they can spare.”
“Copy that, two-nineteen. Ambulances are being dispatched to your location.”
“Ten-four,” Reyes said, returning his attention to me.
I shook my head. “I can’t go anywhere. I have to look for him. He might be hurt.”
“He might be. But you can’t look for him until you get that taken care of.” Reyes nodded toward my forearm.
A two-inch gash had opened my skin, and blood was mixing with rain, streaming crimson from the wound onto the asphalt.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, holding my arm. “I don’t even know how that happened. But I … I can’t leave. He’s out here somewhere.”
“You’re leaving. You can come back,” Reyes said. “You can’t help him right now.”
“He’ll come here. Back to the car.”
Reyes nodded. “Is he a smart guy?”
“He’s fucking brilliant.”
Reyes managed a small smile. It softened his intimidating glare. “Then the hospital is the second place he’ll look.”