Gale
What was happening? One minute, I was staring into a growing vortex, communing with God; the next, I was swept off my feet and thrust into Ozrik’s severely modified chase vehicle, where I landed among a group of strangers who stared as if I’d come from a different planet.
Ozrik tumbled in after me, and the driver punched the gas before the door was closed.
I jolted, the sudden motion sending me crashing into one of the strangers, who shoved me off with an irritated pinch of the brow.
Too frazzled, I couldn’t put names to faces, even though I’d shamefully binge-watched their YouTube channel over the past week under the cover of darkness and with headphones pressed to my ears.
In all fairness, during those sessions, only one person interested me. The rest were background noise.
No one appeared half as friendly as they did online, but why would they? After the outburst at CineVision a few weeks ago, I’d officially become a rival. Olivia and her Wind Riders had stolen Twisted Fates’ opportunity at real fame.
One guy continued filming, the camera aimed in my direction as he narrated, “… rescued by the Ozinator in the nick of time. Don’t worry, folks. We take good care of strays. The audacity of Olivia Windrow leaving her inexperienced brother behind. For shame.”
If I was a different person, I might have stuck up for my sister, but my throat closed, and I sat in petrified silence as reality sank in. Olivia abandoned me.
Someone lowered a window, and the cameraman turned the lens on the storm. The diversion did nothing to calm me. What was happening? Why was I here and not with Olivia?
For a few minutes, everyone was too busy staring at the storm, shouting over one another as the driver took us to a safer location.
With my heart beating too loudly inside my head and my skin shrink-wrapped to my bones, I caught snippets of conversation not swallowed by the roaring wind or thunder of rain and hail hitting the roof.
Chatter about the funnel dissipating, no tornado, and mentions of a lost probe.
“Fucking bullshit,” someone said. “We were so close. I was sure it was coming down.”
I glanced at Ozrik and startled to find he wasn’t looking out the window with the rest of his crew and was instead staring at me. A devil-may-care gleam shone in his eyes.
“You look a little freaked out, Dorothy.”
I shook my head, but my cheeks blazed under his scrutiny, and I was sure he saw all the shameful fantasies I’d indulged in over the past few nights where he played the shining knight.
How appropriate, considering he’d rescued me.
“Cat got your tongue?”
Making my voice as steady as I could, I asked, “Why are you doing this?”
Ozrik’s smile grew. “Why do I chase tornadoes?” He grabbed the front of his jeans and squeezed. “It gives me a raging hard-on. Why do you chase tornadoes?”
Mortified, eyes widening, I stammered, “That’s not what I meant, and I don’t chase tornadoes.”
“Then why were you standing in the field? No offense, but you don’t seem to belong.”
No one knew that more than me. I wanted to say, I’m here because Olivia made me. Because I don’t know how to say no to her.
In light of her abandonment, I said nothing.
I clutched my camera with a white-knuckle grip, revisiting the odd emotions that had risen so unexpectedly in the field. How had I gotten so distracted?
The weight of Ozrik’s attention made me want to crawl out of my skin. “I… I was taking pictures.” The answer was lame. “I work for a magazine… sometimes.”
Once, but he didn’t have to know that.
“Really? I didn’t know that.” He sounded impressed, but I was probably misreading him.
My nerves danced under Ozrik’s scrutiny. I breathed as shallowly as I could, forcing a calm I didn’t feel, so maybe he wouldn’t see how rattled I was on the inside.
“Are you all right?” His tone softened, but I stayed alert. I had long ago trained myself not to trust false platitudes. They were usually a trap.
“Why did you kidnap me?”
Ozrik laughed. “Kidnap you? Dude, I didn’t kidnap you. I fucking rescued you from imminent danger. Didn’t you see that funnel coming down? What are you, a virgin?”
My skin caught fire. “W-hat?”
“A chase virgin. Was this your first time out?”
“Oh… Um…” Motion caught my eye. His buddies had finished admiring the storm and were listening to our conversation, no doubt registering the high color in my cheeks. “Yes.”
Worse, the camera guy had refocused on me. Was he recording?
My lungs shrank. “Chasing tornadoes is Olivia’s thing. She made me come.”
“Because she needed a fifth.”
I nodded, hugging my camera to my chest for comfort. The walls of the vehicle pressed suffocatingly close. With so many bodies, the air felt thin and used.
The SUV’s interior was gutted, with no seats except the driver’s and passenger’s up front. I’d seen snippets on their videos but hadn’t appreciated what it meant to be locked inside with five people I didn’t know, four of whom were solely focused on me.
Sweat prickled along my spine and under my arms. For a guy who preferred to go unnoticed, there were too many eyes on me. The roar inside my head matched the storm.
Ozrik continued talking, his tone light and unthreatening. I did my best to feign nonchalance, to act normal, but I didn’t know what normal looked like and was sure I came across as a fraud.
“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. Your name’s Gale, right? I’m Ozrik.”
He offered a hand to shake, and I stared at it uncomprehendingly for a long time as his words processed sluggishly inside my brain.
“Everyone calls me Oz.”
I released my grip on the camera, inconspicuously wiped my sweaty palm on my pants, then reached out to accept the shake.
The instant before our hands came in contact, a spark of static zapped between our fingers. We simultaneously jerked our hands apart.
Ozrik laughed, shaking the appendage. “Ow. What the hell?”
“How the fuck are we gathering static charges in here?” the camera guy asked. “That’s a good way to mess up the equipment.”
Ozrik cautiously extended his hand. “Let’s try that again. Don’t zap me this time. I’m Ozrik.”
“Gale,” I blundered, pressing my palm to his.
We both braced for another shock, but it didn’t happen.
“A pleasure.” He clung a few beats longer than seemed normal, and my stomach fluttered.
“For the record,” Ozrik said, finally releasing me. “I’m wise beyond my years when it comes to storm chasing. A self-proclaimed professional. So, if you want advice—”
Someone up front laughed. “He also thinks his shit don’t stink and his dick is ten feet long.”
“Ask his mother,” one of the guys said, “she would know all the facts. She has charts.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Ozrik snapped, shooting the guy a dirty look.
To me, he said, “You, my newbie friend, were in a very precarious position in that field. Your team lost track of you, and that funnel was coming down practically on your head. I saw you out there all alone, and it didn’t look like you noticed the imminent danger. ”
“He wasn’t in danger,” the driver said. “That storm was nothing but a cocktease. Now we have to retrieve our probe.”
Ozrik held his hands up in supplication.
“All right. Fine. There was no danger, but we didn’t know that at the time.
A word from the wise wizard.” He thumbed his chest. “That would be me. Something your team captain should have told you. Never wander that far from your escape vehicle. Mother Nature is a bitch who can’t be trusted. She doesn’t play by the rules.”
He clasped my shoulder and peered deep into my eyes, so close I saw myself reflected on their surface, then he lowered his voice. “For the record, Gale, I would never leave a man behind. Ever.”
My skin sizzled where he touched me. The scent of ozone wafted off his body, mixed with a hint of sweat, rain, and something else.
My heart thrummed. I hated being in the spotlight.
The attention of his friends turned to me.
Were my cheeks red? Could they see beyond my barriers?
Was Ozrik acting for their benefit? Playing it up for a future audience.
Why so much sentimentality? Why did he pretend to care?
Tensing, unable to tear my gaze from Ozrik’s, I said, “Can you ask your friend to turn the camera off? It’s making me uncomfortable.”
If I was going to have a full mental breakdown or suffer humiliation at the hands of these strangers, I didn’t want it broadcast on some stupid show later.
“We can’t,” someone said. “Supposed to record everything.”
Ozrik gave the guy a dirty look and signaled his buddy to cut the recording.
The cameraman lowered the gear and capped the lens. My panic didn’t fully recede, but fresh oxygen flooded my brain, and with it came an element of clarity. I could finally think in a straight line.
Noah, my brain provided. The cameraman’s name was Noah.
He packed the gear away in a foam-lined crate.
Beside him was Vern. The two up front were Elliott and Lex.
Apart from Lex, who drove, I remained the group’s entire focus.
Beside Vern, two open laptops displayed grids of screens, flicking through various layers of radar and displaying graphs.
No one seemed to care about them anymore.
As much as they interested me, I didn’t have the capacity to casually ask if I could check them out.
A deafening silence dropped like an anvil as the thunderous hail that had been pelting the windows and steel roof suddenly stopped. The vehicle jumped and jolted over the uneven road as Lex turned a corner.
I didn’t know where we were or what was happening.
Logically, these people didn’t present a threat, but years of torment and abuse had taught me to never let my guard down.