Into the Storm

I've been staring into the soft white glow of the nearly empty fridge for probably five minutes, hoping I’ll find something substantial to eat. It’s never worked for me before, but you never know: this could be the one time that the magical refrigerator fairy appears and adds something delicious without any effort on my part. My stomach grumbles, and I squeeze my eyes tight, making a wish. When my eyes open, nothing in the sparse fridge is different: beers, white wine, a hunk of cheese, pickles, condiments, and definitely expired baking soda.

I sigh and pull out the jar of pickles; at least it’s something. I shut the door and stand quietly munching pickles in the kitchen for a few moments, listening to the reason the fridge is emptier than normal. Outside, the wind is tearing the air so furiously that the house rattles, and every couple of seconds comes a loud shhh sound from a new sheet of rain hammering the windows and roof. This predicament is my own fault, I guess, for forgetting to go to the store before the rain hit.

I move a safe distance away from the windows and watch rain spatter the glass. Between the downpour and my growling stomach, I hardly hear Alaina come down the stairs behind me in socked feet.

“Getting kind of wild out there, huh?” she says as she materializes next to me like a ghost.

I nearly jump out of my skin and clutch my heart. “Jesus, girl, don’t do that to me,” I mutter, and she cracks a wide grin.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve actually ever lived through a hurricane,” she ponders. Though this is probably old hat for you, Florida native.”

“We always evacuated. I’ve never actually been inside of one.”

“Does it count if we’re not really near the eye? This is kind of like - what is it called?- the arm? Like in a galaxy spiral?”

“The rainbands.”

“Scientists come up with weird names for so much and then just call some things like it is. Rainbands, pfft.”

I snort a laugh, and - refusing to let me forget my current predicament - my stomach gives a loud grumble. Alaina turns to me with her eyebrows raised.

“I forgot to go shopping,” I mumble.

“So we’re SOL on food then?”

“Looks that way. Sorry.”

Alaina narrows her eyes, a thoughtful noise escaping her throat. I knew this ponderous look - it usually only meant she was thinking of trouble.

“Let’s go to Johnny’s,” she says, as casually as if suggesting which dress I should wear for a night out or what color I should paint my nails.

I balk at her. Any other day, Johnny’s House of Pizza would be a resolute yes from me. “Right now?!”

She shrugs. “Why not?”

“There’s a hurricane, Alaina.”

“It’s just a rainband, Mer-bear. Not even a real hurricane.”

“That doesn’t make it more safe!”

My protests fall on deaf ears. Alaina opens the fridge and lets out a low whistle. With a resolute look on her face, she slams it shut. “Come on, it’ll be an adventure! We are most definitely going to starve otherwise. What else were you going to do right now anyway?”

“Play the Sims and not get hit by flying debris from a hurricane.”

“Well, now you can play The Sims with some delicious pizza after a nice walk outside.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “We can make it for 24 hours,” I whine, and in a moment of utter betrayal, my stomach growls.

Alaina grins, already walking toward the coat rack.

In a past when I hadn’t known her, Alaina had been what felt to me like some mystical figure. Going outside in a hurricane would probably be the least crazy story she could tell at a party; it’d be the warm up in a long list of anecdotes that would leave the crowd awestruck, dubious, or jealous, depending on the listener. I had been one of the incredulous when I met her; she seemed to me full of bravado and hot air, weaving tales for the sake of gaining attention rather than for sharing some genuine part of her.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that the bravado was genuine. She lived her life fully that way, even when others weren’t watching. There were the stories for the crowd, and then there were the stories she told me when it was us two sitting on the top floor of a parking garage late at night. The casual, almost flippant air with which she talked about her escapades shifted something in how I saw her. I came to realize that she was simply the kind of person who would go to get pizza in the middle of a hurricane even without a best friend in tow. She would maybe never even tell the story until the perfect anecdotal moment thirty years later, if at all.

It felt like her world was on an entirely different plane of existence than mine. My own experiences growing up had been largely uneventful, an almost cookie-cutter experience of childhood and adolescence. A perfect nuclear family with a brother and two parents, doing a sport in the fall and musicals in the spring, getting decent grades, having a small yet fairly close group of friends who I went to the movies with on weekends and had the occasional sleepover to gossip about people we liked. The most daring thing I had gotten myself into was trying beer at a prom after-party and immediately spitting it out.

She told me stories of sneaking out to jump off bridges at 2 AM and rolling out of bed the next morning to take finals, stealing her mom’s car to meet a boy several hours away for the weekend and sleeping in the Walmart parking lot, talking her way into a volunteer trip to Mexico for a week with a group of strangers. It was just a taste of her experiences, enough life for both of us and then some, wrapped into twenty years. It was hard to believe her at first, but enough confirmation from strangers who would show back up from time to time had eventually convinced me.

Where was your mom? I would ask, knowing that her dad had passed away when she was young. It was the only story she couldn’t seem to tell me, the only answers that were noncommittal.

Around, sometimes.

Who looked out for you? I would ask, and she only smiled.

I did.

I dress myself as if I were my own overly fearful mom. Irrational thoughts like ‘Maybe if I put on two windbreakers it would hurt less when a tree hits me’ cross my mind, and I entertain them. Two windbreakers and a rain jacket adorn my body.

Alaina is doing her best to hide a laugh when she sees me come down the stairs. I turn for her as if modeling my outfit, my movements stiff from overdress. Her hand goes to her quivering lips, a feeble and unsuccessful attempt at keeping in her laugh.

“You look like that kid from A Christmas Story when he can’t even put his arms down.”

I laugh, holding my arms stiff out next to me. “I thought this could be my tree shield from flying branches.”

“Impeccable logic.” She pulls her own rain jacket over her clothes and bag, this being her only protection from the elements. “Let’s get going.”

She wraps both arms around my stiff, overprotected left arm and pulls me out into the storm.

There is a brief moment of calm before the weight of the storm hits. Suddenly, I can hardly see from the wind and rain that pelt my face. I should have brought some eye protection. I want to scream at Alaina that this is a terrible idea and we need to go back inside, but before I can protest, she pulls me against the wind, charging ahead into the maelstrom.

Her hand gripped tightly in mine is the only thing that has me grounded. The wind threatens to knock us over with every gust, the world around is barely visible, and I can already tell I’m going to have to sit in a hot shower for at least two hours to ever feel warm again.

”There’s no way Johnny’s pizza is hurricane-level good!” I shout through the gale, unsure if she can even hear me despite being only a foot away.

Her face is mostly covered by her raincoat hood pulled way down, but I can see the smile that stretches to her eyes. “This’ll be the best damn pizza you've ever had! They say food tastes better,“ she shouts, and periodically stops due to her face being pelted with rain. “It’s better when it takes longer to make, or you, like, have to work for it.”

We walk to Johnny’s frequently, rarely ever taking more than ten minutes. I can’t get a good enough look at my watch to see how long it’s been this time, but it feels like hours. Every second stretches immeasurably, yet we manage to shuffle forward. Between the wind howling, the spatter of rain, and the ever-increasing rolls of thunder, I don’t even register the tree splintering.

“Oh, shit, Meredith,” is all Alaina manages before the loud cracks add to the cacophony drowning out her voice.

I’m too bundled up to move much and waste precious seconds turning to look. Through the sheets of rain I can make out a large branch from one tree falling onto another, causing the second tree’s branches also to splinter and begin to tear into the wind.

A second later, I am pulled downward and thrown onto my back with enough force to knock the wind from me. It becomes difficult to orient myself when the rain suddenly begins to pelt my face as if the sky wants to waterboard me. Just as my mouth opens to scream for Alaina, I am shoved aside. I can barely make out her scream through the din.

“Move! Roll over!”

To my own surprise, I react instantly to the advice and twist, rolling through the street like a beetle trying to flip itself. In brief flashes, I can barely see the branches flying past the spot where I just lay.

I hit something hard on my left shoulder, stopping my roll and sending a throbbing pain through my arm. From the distance to the other side of the road, I guess it’s the sidewalk.

I don’t see Alaina. I try my best to sit up but struggle, my movements restricted by the raincoats.

“Alaina!”

There’s no answer that I can hear. I can feel my breath speed up as I struggle to sit up.

“ALAINA!”

“Meredith!”

She appears in my field of vision as if my voice summoned her into existence, looking no worse for wear. Out of sheer relief, I start laughing, small giggles at first, and then before long I am struggling to get breaths out in between my laughter.

Alaina picks me up, a wide grin on her face, and clasps my face between her hands.

“You seriously almost died there, Mer!” Her nose touches mine as she brings my face forward, her eyes suddenly darkening with a seriousness I don’t see very often. “Scared the shit out of me.”

I try to reach up to comfort her but can barely move my arms.

“Hey, I’m alive,” I manage. “And you are too.”

“As if a hurricane would take me out.”

Her usual demeanor returns, and before I can question it, she’s unzipping my jacket and ripping it off. Suddenly my arms feel like they can move again. I stand and desperately clutch her; her sturdiness grounds me.

“This had better be the best tasting pizza ever.”

After what feels like an immeasurable amount of time, the soft neon glow from a sign that reads Johnny’s House of Pizza is visible through the darkness. I let out a shriek of delight, unable to help myself. To my surprise, Alaina actually jumps a little, and I catch her eyes darting around for just a second before she gathers herself.

“Right there, Alaina!” I shout, frantically pointing with the hand that is also holding hers. She follows my fingers, eyes wide, and recognition appears on her face. She lets out a triumphant laugh.

“Oh my god, we actually made it! Woooo!” She all out sprints towards Johnny’s, pulling me along behind her. I almost fall flat on my face with the sudden inertia, managing to gain my footing with a heave from Alaina at the last second as we make the final charge towards Johnny’s.

Alaina throws open the door and half falls into the restaurant. Simultaneously, as if we are in a horror movie, the sky lights up, and sounds of thunder crack the air. I half fall behind her, gasping in the warm, dry air that envelops me. I have never in my life understood people who find dry land after being at sea as well as I do now. The impulse to bend down and kiss the lazily swept floor of Johnny’s is almost overwhelming.

The server - his name tag reading “Tyler” - stares at us slack-jawed. “What the hell are you two doing?” he asks in the mumbled cadence of someone who definitely smoked a joint before coming into what he probably thought was going to be a quiet shift.

“That’s no way to greet your customers, Tyler,” Alaina says with a tut, shaking herself off like a dog.

“There’s like, a hurricane out there.”

“And? We need some pizza.”

“I didn’t even turn the ovens on.”

“Why are you even here?”

Tyler shrugs. “I’m getting time and a half.”

“I respect the hustle, but we need a pepperoni pizza stat, Tyler,” Alaina says, her expression very serious.

Tyler lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, coming right up.”

Alaina turns to me and grins triumphantly, hands on her hips. I give an exasperated shake of my head and then start giggling uncontrollably. I can feel the adrenaline of walking through the storm starting to course through me, causing my arms to shake.

“Don’t lose your nerve yet, Mer-bear. We’ve still got to walk back.

In some distant future, I wonder if she’ll always be like this. You can only stay lucky on reckless abandon for so long. My mom says it’s foolish to spend my time worrying for her; she clearly doesn’t worry for herself. Maybe she doesn’t, but she worries for me, and that’s enough. Doesn’t she deserve someone to have to worry about her? It’s all I can think but cannot say.

Sometimes, in surprisingly mundane moments, I can see how it all plays out. She’ll be sitting at the dining room table doing something normal like eating cereal, and I’ll get a strange feeling like we are standing on a precipice, like there is some deeper understanding trying desperately to reveal itself to me only in this moment.

I can see her sitting at a similar table, years from now, probably in some cafe or brunch spot. She’s waiting for me to join her. In most versions of the future I imagine that we haven’t seen each other in years, that the precious hours of our lives have fallen into that very adult busyness of work and family and trying to stay afloat. Yet she’ll be there, looking much the same as she always has, with slight differences: perhaps she’s got wrinkles around her eyes, or she’s cut her hair differently, or she’s going through a wacky fashion phase.

We are meeting to catch up because she’s in my area or I’m in hers for just a while, and goodness, hasn’t it just been so long? I imagine she called me out of the blue, the slight hopefulness in her voice barely noticeable but present, the relief in her response when I agreed.

I like to think that parts of her have changed and parts have not. Maybe she’s tempered the recklessness, but the sense of adventure never died. Perhaps she’s a travel blogger and sleeps in a new country every few weeks, or does some extreme sport. No matter what it is, she’s gained some sense of balance and stability. She’s grounded, ye still wild.

What we talk about changes from fantasy to fantasy, but it’s always trivial. What matters most is the way she looks, the ease in her shoulders, the gentle wrinkles of a life well lived on her face. What matters is the warmth and ease of our conversation after having spent so much time apart. I’ve been good, truly, she says with sincerity. That’s what counts.

Perhaps it is the hopeful part of me. I’ve seen statistics for people who grow up like Alaina, and it’s hard to imagine her not beating them. She’s already made such strides in her life. It couldn’t have all been for nothing. Sometimes I see small cracks in the facade. I’ve found her sitting at the top of the parking garage, awake for over 24 hours and staring off into the distance. I’ve seen her too drunk to walk and tears coming endlessly onto her pillow or my shoulder, an obvious trigger nowhere to be found. I know the darkness that lies underneath.

I sometimes think of her in that cafe and send a wish into the universe, as if putting that image out will help her get there. I don’t know if I can do for her what she’s done for me. I don’t know if I - or anyone, for that matter- really could look out for her the way she deserves, or if she would ever let them. But I can worry for her. I can wish for her. I can pray to whatever spiritual energy governs the cosmos that they give a little grace to my friend.