Page 15 of The Spider & the Storm

But, no, this feeling … this sick, jittering feeling crawling beneath my skin and worming its way through my gut …

This wasn’t anxiety.

This was something else.

The sound of an engine rumbling down the street broke through the silence, and then it stopped. The black Dodge truckI knew well must’ve just pulled up to the house. Less than two minutes later, Luke exited the back door with Melanie following close behind. Then, through the corner of my eye, I watched their approach, their fingers interlocked all the while.

I half expected them to walk past without so much as a hello. I never knew what any particular day would bring to my interactions with my brother. Some days, he pretended I didn’t exist. Other days, nothing seemed to exist outside of Melanie and cigarettes and his part-time job at the local pizza place. But today, he dropped beside me on the white couch, then pulled Melanie onto his lap.

“Whatcha reading, ass breath?” he asked, bumping his arm against mine.

“Oh God, Luke,” Melanie scolded, smacking his chest playfully. “Don't be mean.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her temple against his.

“He knows I'm kidding.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders before abruptly turning to me and asking, “Right?”

“Sure,” I muttered, still unable to calm my lungs or heart or the shakiness in my limbs and fingertips.

“Hey, Charlie,” Melanie said, her voice gentle and soft, just as it always was. “You okay?”

As it had turned out, Melanie hadn't been into me the way Ritchie the dick assumed all those years ago, and she'd become a better friend instead.

As for her and my brother … well, let's just say, they'd been together since that night. And funnily enough, it didn't irk me nearly as much as it had when I thought of him with other girls.

Maybe I’d just known Melanie was different, the same way I knew now that something was wrong.

“Yeah,” I answered, but I wasn't so sure.

My breath continued to escalate as a barrage of possibilities pelted haphazardly through my mind—both realistic and absurd.

Dad losing his job and us going broke.

A meteor hitting the planet and wiping out the human race.

Someone breaking in and stealing my computer and video games and Mom’s favorite necklace.

All of us contracting malaria and suffering a horrible death.

“Hey.” Luke laid his hand against my upper back. “What's going on?”

I swallowed and finally pulled my attention from the yard to look into his eyes. Silently, I pleaded with him to be my big, brave brother and make the bad feeling go away, but unlike me, Luke was lucky and normal, and he failed to know when I was in the middle of a panic attack or having a deep-seated intuitive feeling.

“What's wrong? Do you need, um … you need medicine or something?”

“No,” I said irritably, shaking my head. “I … I don’t know. I just don’t feel right. Something just … I don’t know.”

“Oh,” he said, nodding. “You’re, like, freaking out or something?”

He narrowed his eyes, staring at me for a moment like he didn’t know what the hell to do with me. And, hey, that made two of us. But then sudden recollection dawned on him, and his mouth fell open.

“Wait … is this like the hurricane?”

I shrugged, my legs continuing to bounce against the floorboards. “I don’t know. I just … I don’t like it.”

“Well, what is it about? What made you feel like this?”

Melanie looked between Luke and me, confused. “Can I help with anything?”

Luke lifted a hand, gesturing for her to wait a moment as he said with more urgency than I'd expected, “Did something happen? Did you, I dunno … hear something on TV? Like how you got freaked out when you heard about the storm?”

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