Page 63 of When the Storm Breaks
“I like hanging out with you too. And I kind of miss you when you’re not around.”
“Not sure if that’s good or bad.”
“No idea. It’s just how it is.”
“What I said about Noah...”
“You’re trying to look out for him. I get it.”
“I don’t think you do.” I paused the documentary, sensing he was going to tell me something important and that it was rare for him to open up.
He was rubbing my leg clad in black sweatpants, his gaze on the frozen TV screen while I stared at his profile and waited for him to speak. “I was raised by a junkie. Sometimes she’d get clean and make an effort. When I was around Noah’s age, she met this guy. He wasn’t like the other scumbags she usually brought home. He was half-decent and treated her right.” He looked down at my legs draped over his lap. “He owned a few horses. He’s the first one who ever took me riding. And I got this idea in my head that if my mom married this guy our lives would be better. But one night he came over to our apartment and I heard them fighting. Dishes were breaking and shit and my mom told him to get the hell out and never come back. I ran into the living room and I grabbed the guy’s arm and I was begging him to stay, to take me with him. I don’t know what the hell I wanted. A different life, I guess... But he just ruffled my hair then walked out the door and that was it.”
“Brody...”
“Noah isn’t me. His life is nothing like mine was. He likes you so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t hang out with him.” He took the remote out of my hand and hit play, indicating that he was done talking.
“Brody, I’m so sorry that happened to you.” I wanted to find the right words to console him, to say more on the topic, but he squeezed my thigh and jerked his chin toward the TV. “You’re missing the show.”
He was done talking, done sharing the secrets of his soul, so I went back to watching the documentary about the evolution of hip-hop. Halfway through it, I realized I was snuggled up against Brody, his arm wrapped around my shoulders and my cheek pressed against his chest, my hand over his heart. I didn’t even know how I’d ended up here, but it felt right. I was thinking about the story he’d told me, and I had a feeling that so many worse things had happened in Brody’s childhood. I’d seen for myself how drugs fucked up people’s heads and turned them into different people, so I couldn’t even imagine how horrible it would have been to be raised by an addict. And yet, out of all the stories he could have told, that one had made an impact on him. Maybe it was because, for a little while, someone had been kind to him and treated him like he mattered.
And while I was watching Tupac’s beautiful face on the screen, something strange grabbed hold of me, a strong vibration I couldn’t shake off.
I’d been too young to remember my mom or the shooting. But I used to go through the boxes of photos Maw Maw kept in the closet, sifting through my mother’s memories. Of her as a girl holding her first guitar. Of her on the road with Rhett when she was his backup singer. She left home at eighteen and headed to Nashville with big dreams but all she’d ended up with was a lousy husband and two kids he never wanted. Maw Maw said they were in the midst of a divorce when she came back to Louisiana with me and Landry.
And on her way back, at just after midnight, she stopped for gas then ran into the convenience store to buy diapers and milk. Why had she been buying milk? I could see it splattered on the floor next to the pool of blood coming from my mother’s bullet-ridden lifeless body.
Wrong place, wrong time. Landry and I had been asleep in the car, so she’d pulled up right in front of the store and thought she’d just run in real quick. Maybe she’d kept an eye on us to make sure we were okay, and that’s why she hadn’t noticed the man who walked in with a gun.
I could hear the sirens, the shots being fired, and the shouts into the radio that an officer was down.
The man came out of the convenience store and he looked straight at me then he lifted his gun and aimed it at me.No. No, no, no. What are you doing, Brody?My body jerked, and I tried to run but my legs were made of concrete.
“Hey. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
I didn’t know how long he’d been repeating the words or how long he’d been holding me in his arms but when my vision cleared, I went limp in his arms, exhausted.
“What happened?” he asked, stroking my hair so gently I nearly cried.
“I don’t know. I just...” I shook my head, unable to explain it. How could I tell him I saw him with a gun in his hand, about to shoot me? How could I tell him I’d had a crazy vision that made zero sense? I always kept my visions to myself because if I told anyone the things I saw, they’d have me locked up.
“You went somewhere else. Where were you, Shiloh?”
I looked into his whiskey brown eyes and saw that he wasn’t the person in my vision. It had just been someone who resembled him. Relief flooded my body. I touched his face and pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. “The past.”
“Sometimes it’s a dangerous place to visit.”
I took a shuddering breath. “It is.”
“Does this happen to you a lot?”
He knew this wasn’t normal, and that I hadn’t just been reminiscing or recalling a bad memory. That I’d actually felt like I was there, seeing it play out before my eyes. “Not a lot, no. Weirdly, the moon and my cycle affect it.” Oh God, that sounded so crazy. Like I really was a witch.
“Like a lucid dream?” he asked, understanding it far better than I’d explained it.
“Yeah, it’s like that. Have you ever had one?”
“I don’t have the gift you do but I took a crazy trip once so I kind of get where you’re coming from.”
