Page 5 of To Catch a Firefly

Lucky makes a grabby hand, and I pass over the marbles. He takes a seat a ways back from the jars, and I follow suit, sitting beside him, our knees brushing. He tosses marbles, one afteranother, rarely missing the jars. I can’t stop staring at the rip in his shirt. What happened?

After a minute, Lucky catches my eye. “You didn’t know, did you?”

I shake my head.

“Everyone knows, Ellis.”

Not me.

He throws another marble. “Does it change anything?”

Why would it change anything?

Lucky must be able to read my face—he always can—because he rolls his eyes a little. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’m an idiot.”

I bump his shoulder with my own.

“I know,” he says lightly, tossing a big red marble. It tinks loudly before settling into the glass. “It’s me and you.”

Yeah, it is.

When Lucky runs out of marbles, he sighs. “I’m gonna get out of this town one day, El.” His words tighten around my chest like a rubber band, but he goes on in a rush. “I have to. You’re the only good thing here; you know that. Maybe I’ll go back to Chicago or try New York. Or, hell, Thailand even. Anywhere would be better than this.”

He’s talked about leaving before, ever since he moved here really. Lucky doesn’t like our small, rural town, not after growing up in a big city. But this time, he sounds serious.

“You could come with me,” he says.

I don’t have a chance to reply before a high-pitched siren pierces the air. Lucky and I look at each other in surprise.

“Tornado alarm,” he says. “It’s not Saturday.”

I shake my head, and the two of us bolt.

The wind whips my face as soon as we reach the clearing outside the silo. The sky is darker now, gray and angry, and clouds swirl overhead in a pattern that means danger. Theweather station didn’t warn about a storm this bad, but that doesn’t mean much here.

“Shit,” Lucky says, covering his eyes with his arm as some dust kicks up. “Let’s go.”

Lucky grabs a handful of my shirt as we take off toward our houses. The quickest way is through the cornfields, not around, so that’s the way I go. The stalks are head-height this time of year, and the leaves smack us as we run, leaving little stinging bites in their wake. Every once in a while, they blow at a harsh angle before settling.

As soon as we burst from the field, I hear Lucky’s mom calling. Lucky yells back as we come around my house, heading for the storm shelter that’s buried underground halfway between our two houses. Lucky’s dad is helping my mom down the ladder, and her face falls in relief when she sees us running. I can’t hear what she says over the wind, but Lucky’s mom urges us forward, watching the skyline behind us.

I don’t dare look back.

When we reach the shelter, Lucky’s dad is the only one above the surface. I don’t stop to catch my breath, just dart toward the opening in the ground. I’m about to step down when I realize Lucky isn’t hanging on to me anymore.

When I turn back, my heart nearly stops.

Lucky is standing fifty feet away, his back to us. His clothes whip around him in the harsh wind, and his head is tipped up toward the sky. I see it then, the tornado. It looks otherworldly, like it doesn’t belong. Black clouds surround the area above where the twister reaches towards the earth, and lightning strikes as I watch, lighting the sky in a brilliant flash of eerie white. A mere second later, thunder booms as the rain reaches us. It comes down in a sheet, soaking me in seconds.

Lucky doesn’t move, even as his dad starts to yell. Even as the wind turns vicious. Even as the sky blackens overhead.

Lucky, goddamn it.

He drops his head back, palms up toward the sky, as if he’s soaking it in. As if he’s reveling in the savage force of nature that’s raging ever closer. His hair circles his head, angry like the corn and the clouds and the sky.

He’s never looked wilder.

“Luck!” I scream.

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