Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Of course Charlie brought my favorite crumbly, messy Nature Valley bars. I used to hoard them in my dorm like a squirrel packing nuts away for winter. Our pantry at home was always stocked with a Costco-sized box of them.
We sit across from each other at one of the tables in the dining hall, crunching into our respective granola bars. I keep my knees positioned to the side of the seat to avoid any accidental touches between us.
“The warden’s office is on the other side of the yard,” he says after a swallow. “There might be an exit on this side of the prison, but we know the other cell block has an exit. For time’s sake, I think we should head back that way.”
I nod s?owly as I crunch. “Yeah. That makes sense. The warden’s office is a separate building?”
“Uh-huh.” He swallows. “I think the warden used to live on the premises. There’s a whole residential unit at the back of the yard, per the blueprint.”
I chew the inside of my cheek, staring down at my granola bar. “What if we can’t get inside?”
Charlie shrugs. “Then we can’t get inside. Look, Win”—he levels with me, eye to eye—“I’ll be completely honest with you. I’m not sure we’re gonna find anything at all. It’s been decades, not to mention this place closed down. You’d think they’d clean out all the records.”
“But—”
“But”—he tilts his chin down, looking at me through his thick lashes—“I think it’s strange as hell we found that journal, so who knows what else we might find? I can’t promise it’ll work out, but we can try.”
As I pop the last bite of granola bar in my mouth, crumpling the plastic wrapper, Charlie slides another across the table and holds his hand out for my trash. I pass it over and smile in quiet thanks before tearing into the next.
“Hey, Charlie?” I swallow my bite.
“Yeah?”
“Why’d you really leave the forecasting office?” Dropping my voice, I add, “You loved that job.”
The question has been stuck in the back of my head all day.
It’s one detail I can’t seem to reconcile.
From the first time we grabbed lunch together on campus, I’ve known working as a forecaster had been his dream since he was a kid.
It doesn’t compute why he’d give up something he fought so hard for.
“I wanted to help people.” He shrugs, looking down at the wrapper in his hands as he starts to fold it into a neat rectangle. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved all the data analysis, but all I could do is tell people ‘Hey, this area might see something scary on this day.’”
“How does chasing help, though? Isn’t it about data gathering too?”
“It is. But our crew live streams our chases, and our footage is syndicated with other chasers through this bigger network we’re in.
We reach thousands and thousands of people in real time.
Sometimes our viewers will have friends or family in the risk areas, and something’ll touch down, and they’ll text them, only to find out that person had no idea there was even a risk of severe weather that day.
” He takes a bite, chews, swallows. “A lot of the time, chasers are the first people to confirm a tornado on the ground. We’re able to warn communities even faster than local networks sometimes.
We see them with our own eyes. We can let viewers know if it’s rain wrapped, or a huge wedge, or exactly what street it’s heading toward.
We’re the first on scene to help clean up in the aftermath. ”
I’ve tried not to watch very many of the Saddle Up Storm Chasers videos.
I really have. I can count on two hands the number of streams I’ve watched (okay, maybe three hands).
He’s right. There’s always dozens of comments in the stream chat thanking them for what they do.
Someone even mentioned they texted their parents, who lived in the warning zone, telling them to get to shelter.
One moment on a stream that popped up on my home feed a few months ago stands out in stunning clarity, after hearing this reasoning.
Their team just missed a passing storm in a small town in southeast Dallas.
But even as the dark sky dissipated, the guys drove around a damaged neighborhood, handing out pallets of water bottles, and asking if anyone needed help clearing debris.
The wrapper in Charlie’s hands is a smooth, flat bar now.
“I don’t think I ever told you, but my mom lost her best friend in a tornado.
I was in sixth grade, and all I remember is that it was rainy.
My dad was in Chicago for some architecture conference, and Mom threw me and my brothers into the backseat of the van.
Didn’t even bother buckling us before she took off.
I’ll never forget the sight of it. Whole houses, reduced to toothpicks. Her friend, Liz, didn’t make it.”
“I’m so sorry.” Sympathy for Katherine pangs in my chest as I resist the urge to reach out and touch him.
Growing up in Kansas, the blare of a tornado siren was something you came to expect in the spring.
Most people didn’t pay them much mind. It was more of a nuisance than anything.
“I guess it’s easy to forget how dangerous they can really be when most of the ones back home were EF1s at worst.”
Charlie growls. “The Enhanced Fujita scale is so flawed. It’s damage-ranked, and doesn’t take into account wind speeds or anything.
So you could have a giant EF5 wedge that would decimate a neighborhood rip through a corn field and it’ll be documented as an EF2.
We should be implementing radar-based wind speed measurements alongside damage assessments to categorize storm strength.
As we overbuild, and what were once rural areas develop, we’re going to see more and more damaging storms, simply because we have more people in the way of them. ”
I always knew Charlie loved weather—good, bad, rare. And maybe we just fell into routine when we were still together, but I never saw much of this side of him: intensely passionate to the point of frustration. Was severe storms the interest he poured himself into as distraction in my absence?
“Anyway, after what happened to my mom’s friend, I was obsessed with wondering why it happened.
How could I help prevent that from happening to someone else?
Kinda kick-started the whole weather thing for me.
But yeah, it’s the helping people I really want to do.
It’s easier being the boots on the ground. ”
My heart squeezes. It’s another tally mark in the seemingly-infinite column of REASONS CHARLES ROSENHOTH IS A GOOD PERSON. He does what he does so he can help prevent what happened to his family from happening to another, as best he can.
“That’s why you were so bitter about today,” I mutter, without thinking. Not because he takes issue with Garrett’s leadership. Because he likes being ready to assist.
He looks at me like I whipped out a sonnet in perfect Spanish. “You picked up on that?”
I let a tentative smile spread. “Like you said, you’ve never been a mystery to me, Flower Boy.”
He snorts, running a hand through his hair, and it’s hard to tell in the dim light, but I swear a blush kisses the peaks of his cheekbones, creeping back toward his ears.
Maybe that old nickname was a dangerous play.
“Yeah. Well. The fact I’ve had enough free time to run around talking to ghosts with you all afternoon is enough evidence for how boring this shit is.
And Garrett’s been extra picky about it, too.
Which, I get—it’s been a tough season for us.
The grant money from the storm photography competition would keep us afloat well into next year. But yeah, I get antsy.”
Like his words manifesting to life, he stands and stretches his arms over his head, his shirt lifting just enough to show off the light, creamy skin of his stomach. He pivots and picks up the audio recorder on the table behind us.
“What got you into all of”—he shimmies the recorder in the air—“this?” He sets the recorder by my backpack then crosses the room to grab the other.
“River did, actually.” My gaze drops and softens on the recorder, everything at its edges fuzzing, as I’m drawn back, two years into the past.
When I drove back north that fall, leaving my life here behind, the promise of the paranormal was the one thing that would get my brother out of bed. River and I spent our nights chasing ghosts, running from the ones that haunted us at home.
He’d cling to his audio recorder like a rosary as we tumbled over the fence of the house around the block where Mr. Jenkins passed away when we were kids.
Or as we broke into the abandoned sugar factory on the edge of town and sat back to back in the room where a manager had been murdered by a disgruntled ex-employee.
And as we crouched against the bumper of my car on creepy Gallagher Road, jumping every time something rustled in the claustrophobic tree line.
On the drive home, he’d play the tapes back over, and over, and over until we deciphered meaning from the noise.
“You hear that? It said DANGER!” He shook the recorder like it was the arm of the winning prize fighter as we were headed home from another visit to the sugar factory.
“Danger? Play it back.” He did; I still didn’t hear it. “You ever stop to think you’re hearing what you want to hear, Riv? I mean, it’s like an audial Rorschach test.”
He scoffed. “Whatever, Win. I’ll prove it to you. Just watch.”
It took him a few weeks, but he kept his word. He proved it to me.
It was a Tuesday night; I was up late job hunting.
Mom was on the phone with Patrick, arguing about how much commissary money he needed, as Ghost droned on the TV in the background, playing for the third time that day.
River knocked on my door and I knew what he needed.
He needed what I’d needed when I was fifteen and trapped in that house: to get away from it all.
We wound up back at the sugar factory. I was mindlessly drilling opening positions with my feet, watching dust motes float in a beam of light streaming through the window from the setting sun while River scattered our recorders around the room.
Something clanged and the hairs on my arms stood on end.
Footsteps crunched against the dirty, gravelly floors, then an exhaled breath hit my shoulder, its heat building as it rushed faster, then dissipated. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.
“Okay, Riv, you’re—”
But when I turned around he wasn’t behind me. I was alone down there. At least, that’s what I thought.
“I actually had a moment not unlike what happened outside of James’s cell.
Wasn’t nearly as scary, though.” I clear my throat and stand to help Charlie gather the various devices strewn across the room.
“Like a breath on the back of my neck. Something so visceral, so unexplainable, I couldn’t help but believe it.
” I snort as I flick off the music box from behind, avoiding setting it off.
“You’d actually be really amused to know before that, I was a skeptical debunker who shit on this stuff, just like you. ”
“I’m not shitting.” He brings a hand to his chest in mock-offense. “I’m questioning. It’s good to question.”
Tucking the music box under my arm, I lift the Spirit Candle and point it at him. “But questioning means you’re actually open to being wrong. Not something you’re great at, darlin’.” The snarky pet name slips on accident, right into the deep end of Far Too Intimate.
But Charlie doesn’t miss a beat.
“You know, some indigenous tribes in the plains region believe those smaller, less dangerous tornados are wandering spirits.” Charlie huffs a laugh through his nose as he picks up the REM Pod and cuts it off, mid-squeal. “So maybe I’ve been chasing ghosts all these years, too.”
He meets me back at my backpack, hands it to me, and I smile. “See, I knew I’d make a believer of you yet.”
The distance between us is negligible. It feels like we stripped bare in front of each other, but we’re both fully clothed.
It’s been so long since we’ve had such a frank, open conversation; I forgot how seamless it’s always been between us.
The throbbing vein in my neck loves the way his gaze slowly drops to my mouth.
My chest expands with a strangled breath as I swear he leans in closer.
A twinkle lopes through his eye as he searches my face, the timbre of his voice low and earnest as he says, “I think there’s a lot of things you could make me believe in.”