Chapter One
One Saturday morning in March, the wind began to whistle around the windows and doors. I looked out the living room window and saw the sky had turned black with fast moving clouds. Streaks of lightning followed by booming thunder shook the house a little. Rain started falling in great sheets. Sean and I jumped up off the floor and looked at Mom who was standing in the kitchen. She was watching a cooking show on the small television on the counter and assembling stuff for baking. We all were startled when we heard a loud pop, which sent the room into darkness.
Only moments ago, the sky had been clear with just a few white clouds, normal for spring. My older brother Sean, who is twelve, and I were in the living room, playing the Need for CandaceSpeed video game on the television screen. I’m only ten, but I’m a good driver. At least on video games. He didn’t stand a chance, I thought. He was trying to crash my green 1969 GTO with his purple 1971 Challenger.
“Arrgh!” he cried out as I twisted my car in front of his, cutting off his attempt to get ahead of me.
Our game vanished with the electricity.
I felt myself pop out of my body, somehow. I can’t explain it but when this happens, I see things in my mind that haven’t happened yet. I “saw” a huge limb come crashing down off the big elm tree along our driveway. It fell across the concrete and onto the lawn. In my mind, I screamed.
I dashed into the kitchen, where Mom had begun mixing up something that would soon smell yummy, I knew.
“Mom, what should we do?” I exclaimed, fear in my voice.
“Here—look in the bottom kitchen drawer and pull out the emergency candles,” she said as she slammed the baking pan into the oven. Our stove is gas, so she could keep cooking, thank goodness. She searched for matches in an upper cabinet. She keeps things like that up high so we can’t reach them. She wants to keep possible danger away from us. Like we don’t know how to climb. Duh. Okay, maybe it was important when we were little.
“Noah, get a move on. Get those candles,” shouted Mom above the noise of thunder and rain. Branches of trees crashed against the house. I’ve seen pictures of hurricane winds on the news. This wasn’t a hurricane, but I thought the trees must look bent over under water and wind like on the news.
“Mom! A big branch is going to fall from the elm tree and hit the lawn!” I exclaimed.
“The tree is fine. Just get those candles over here so I can light them,” she said, sounding nervous.
That’s what always happens when I have a vision. No one ever believes me. This vision thing happens from time to time. I don’t understand why or how. I never know when one is going to pop in.
Sean was useless, just standing in the living room screaming and flapping his arms. Poor Sean. He has mild autism spectrum disorder and doesn’t do well with noise and chaos. Sometimes, he has tantrums. His therapy dog, Ozzie, rubbed against Sean’s legs, trying to calm him. Ozzie is a two-year-old chocolate Labrador. Just then, we began to hear sirens, like from a fire truck. The screech hurt Ozzie’s ears and he howled, adding to the chaos.
I handed a bunch of short white candles to Mom and ran to a window to see if there was a fire. I didn’t see anything burning and it seemed the sirens were actually out on the highway a couple blocks away. Right then, a streak of lightning seemed to strike the elm tree by the driveway and a branch split away, just like I saw it happen in my mind. The tree was sizzling, but not really on fire.
“Mom! The tree was hit by lightning, just like I saw,” I screamed.
Too busy to even respond, she ran into the garage to collect a couple of kerosene lanterns we keep for camping trips. While the door between the house and the garage was open, my nose felt twitchy and I noticed the air smelled different.
“Mom, what is that smell?” I asked.
“That is ozone. That happens when there is a storm,” she replied as she pulled the lanterns off a shelf.
She placed those in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom and lighted them. Then she rushed to the living room to calm Sean, who stood in front of the television, still screaming. I followed her, wanting to stay near. I was freaking out, too, but Sean always gets all the attention because of his disease. When there’s a lot of noise or people around, he says he starts feeling buzzy. Sometimes, he goes to sit in his closet. He says he needs quiet time, and darkness. I turned away so Mom wouldn’t see my disappointment. It made me sad to be ignored.
Dad was at work, even though it was Saturday. Mom tried calling him from the phone in the living room, but the landline was out with the electricity. My cell phone was in the back pocket of my jeans. I pulled it out and turned it on. It still worked, so I pressed the button for Dad’s work number and handed it to her while she comforted Sean the best she could. He doesn’t like to be touched, so hugging was not an option. She kept brushing her hands down along the outside of his body, smoothing his energy field. I wished she would hug me.
I heard Mom tell Dad what happened but that we were okay. She told him about the huge broken branch from the elm tree. When she got off my phone, she handed it back to me, saying that Dad was also experiencing the storm at his office downtown but would get home when the roads cleared. My shoulders relaxed with relief that he was okay and would arrive soon.
The storm passed on gales of wind and water. It seemed like a long time had passed, but it was only a little while. The electricity was still off, but we were snug with the candles and lanterns. The semi-darkness was a little spooky, I thought.