At the top of the steps, Daniel made his way past the bathroom into all the glorious open space in the hallway beyond. Two kids stumbled into a bedroom and were yelled at by some other kids. They came back out giggling and covering their mouths, hanging onto one another and sloshing beer. Daniel got out of their way as they staggered toward the steps.
“Roby?” Daniel rapped a knuckle on the bedroom door.
“Fuck off!” someone not Roby yelled.
He went to the next room. The door was open a crack. Daniel pushed it open a bit more. “Dude, are you in there? I think I need a ride home.”
The bedroom was empty, but a wreck. It looked like Jeremy’s room. There were posters on the walls, a jersey tacked amongst them, a shelf lined with trophies. Daniel backed out and looked the other direction down the hallway. The Stevens’s house had more bedrooms than his house had rooms.
“Hey, you.”
Daniel turned to see Amanda Hicks coming down the hall from the direction of the piss line. She waggled her finger at him, and Daniel heard the kids downstairs roar with laughter over one of the YouTube videos.
“Hey, Amanda, look, I’m sorry about the beer—” Daniel waved his empty cup. “Some asshole bumped into me, and then I fell forward—”
“Shutup,” Amanda said. She grabbed a handful of Daniel’s formerly wrinkle-free shirt in a tight, angry fist and pulled him into Jeremy’s room. “Get in here.”
Daniel stumbled into the room and the door slammed shut behind Amanda, leaving them in darkness. Daniel could hear the wind outside roaring against the glass and rattling the shutters. He brought his hands up in front of himself to ward off Amanda’s attack, but the light beside the bed clicked on instead.
“Are you fucking scared of me or something?” She rested one hand on her hip and smiled at the defensive pose Daniel had adopted.
“No,” Daniel lied.
Amanda crawled onto the bed, crossed it on her hands and knees, and turned on the lamp on the other side. She titled the shade to aim more light at him. Daniel could hear the kids downstairs howling with laughter.
“Take off your shirt,” Amanda told him.
Daniel looked down to confirm that he was wearing one. His head felt dizzy. He set his cup on the mantle, between a trophy and a teddy bear, and fumbled at the hem of his t-shirt. He wasn’t sure why he was obeying, what spell this girl, who had once grabbed him and stuck her tongue in his mouth while waiting on the bus, had on him. He pulled his shirt off and stood there, holding it.
“Drop it,” she said. Amanda moved toward the foot of the bed and sat there, on her knees, watching him. Daniel let go of his shirt. The roar of the wind outside and the roars of laughter from downstairs created a dreamlike surrealness around him. This wasn’t the way he saw the night, or his life, going. But then, he never imagined himself going off to college a virgin, either.
“Now the pants,” she said.
Daniel grabbed his belt buckle, as much to defend it as release it. “What about you?” he asked, then realized how unromantic and crude that sounded. It was like he thought their mutual nakedness was something to barter.
Amanda reached for her pants, dug her hand in her pocket, and came out with her cellphone. “I was just gonna watch and take some pics,” she said.
Daniel laughed nervously and went to grab the phone from her. Amanda hid it behind her back and threw a hand against his chest.
“I’m just kidding,” she said. “I’m turning off the ringer. Just let me text my girlfriend.”
Daniel stood there while she jabbed at the thing with her thumbs. He looked back at his shirt, which sat in a crumpled heap below Jeremy’s mantle. He wondered what Roby and Jada were doing.
“I meant it about those pants,” Amanda said.
He looked back to find her lounging at the head of the bed in a mash of pillows. She smiled at him, looked pointedly in the general direction of his belt, the phone having disappeared from her hands. “Off,” she commanded. “Then you get a kiss.”
Daniel looked at the lamps on either side of the bed. “Shouldn’t it be darker in here?”
“Not if I’m gonna see.” She waved her hand at his belt, as if dismissing it from the room.
Daniel went over and locked the door, then came back toward her side of the bed.
“Down there,” she said, pointing.
Daniel returned to his spot. He smiled unconvincingly and pulled the tab of his belt through the buckle, releasing the metal finger from its worn-out hole in the leather. The belt jangled while he opened the button on his shorts. Rather than go through the process a second time, and to avoid Amanda making fun of his white briefs, he pulled both his underwear and shorts down to his ankles with one motion and nearly fell over as his sneakers caught in his underwear. Daniel danced and yanked one shoe off to free his feet, then regained his balance. He stood up and threw both arms wide in a “Ta-Da! Are-you-satisified?” expression.
Amanda smiled, and the unfortunate timing of the downstairs laugh-track made his testicles seem to shrink as a living room full of kids laughed loud enough for him to hear.
“Can you turn around?”
Daniel followed Amanda’s eyes and smirk and looked down at his penis. It was already throbbing just from the eroticism of being seen naked by a girl. He turned around, his arms still raised as if airport security had found a tube of toothpaste in his carry-on. He wondered if he should be fighting his erection or encouraging it. More laughter from downstairs helped make up his penis’ mind, if not his.
“That’s perfect,” Amanda said, as Daniel came back around to face her. She was smiling at his dick, which made Daniel wonder what exactly she found to be perfect. Lord knows, he would love to have some validation in that direction. Like he suspected most boys his age did, Daniel fretted over the nature of his penis: the size, shape, curvature, and every little vein of the thing. As far as he could tell, Chatroullete, a website that randomly matched web-camera enabled victims, was designed from the ground-up to facilitate a large sampling of comparative genitalia for curious male teens. Daniel had spent more than his fair share of time rapidly clicking through the masturbatory feast, wondering if his cock was normal. His conclusion, after hours of impartial research, was that there was no such thing as a normal penis.
Daniel and his penis moved toward the bed and Amanda.
“Get the fuck outta here,” Amanda said.
Daniel froze. “Do what?”
She leaned forward from the pillows and laughed at him. “I said get the fuck outta here you creep.”
“But I thought—?”
Amanda spun from the bed, aimed a middle finger at Jeremy’s trophies on the mantle, fumbled for the lock at the door, then stormed outside.
The laughter from downstairs was riotous. Daniel tugged his shorts on and jammed his foot back into his shoe. He snagged his shirt from the floor and shrugged it on. Pulling out his cellphone, he brought up Hunter’s number and selected it. He was zipping up his shorts with one hand when his phone beeped with an error.
Daniel looked down at the phone. There was no signal.
“Jesus Christ this sucks,” he said to himself. He went out into the hallway and fought his way down the steps, past all the girls with crossed knees. The way his t-shirt rode up on his neck, Daniel knew he’d put it on backwards. The thump of the bass and the clamor of the crowd and the echo of Amanda’s laughter made it feel hot as hell inside the house. When he got to the base of the stairs, Daniel heard a round of raucous applause. He looked up from the lack of bars on his cellphone to see everyone in the living room looking back at him, necks craned from the sofa. On the TV, a naked kid stood facing away from a webcam. The boy spun slowly, and a girl who looked very much like Amanda Hicks could be seen on the bed beyond. A boy with a penis very much in the shape of Daniel’s rotated past the camera, then kept spinning.
The wind and the laughter roared even louder in Daniel’s ears. Somewhere, a teddy bear sat on a mantle, out of p
lace, unblinking, seeing nothing.
9
A billion faces were pointed his way, but Daniel saw his sister’s first. The look of raw horror on her face, of absolute disgust, gave Daniel a fever. He wilted. The laughter was background noise to the knowledge that he’d never be able to look at her or ever talk to her for the rest of his life. He wondered how that was going to work out for the next year. He would have to run away from home and skip college. He was now homeless.
Daniel turned and ran toward the front door, his panic pure comedic gold for the others. Cellphones flashed as they captured the moment for all eternity. Daniel fumbled with the door, his mind already racing with how many Facebook status updates he was about to become the featured attraction of. He would never be able to go to school again. He would have to move. Some other family would have to adopt him. His life as he knew it was over.
He finally got the fancy lever on the door figured out, and a gust of air forced it open. The door flew out of Daniel’s hands and slammed into the small table in the foyer, seeming as if his rage had done the damage. Daniel pushed out into the wind, leaving the blasted thing open, and looked to his phone again, hoping Hunter would be able to come and get him immediately. His brother was gonna kill him for this.
A branch overhead snapped in the breeze. Kids along the driveway were yipping and yelling over the howling wind, clutching their hair and purses. Daniel stood there, waiting for a bar to appear on his cellphone, when a flash of blue lights appeared down the cul-de-sac. A police car rolled up to put an end to the worst party of Daniel’s brief life.
Two cops got out, cones of bright white light emanating from their hands. The flashlights spun over the party scene and bobbed their way toward the front door. Daniel froze on the stoop. Inside, he could hear the laughter and fun disintegrate into panicked curses. The stomping of running feet melded with the bass thumps. Faces appeared in parted blinds. Plastic cups rattled on hardwood.
“What’s your name, son?”
A searchlight shone in Daniel’s eyes.
“Daniel Stillman,” he blurted out.
He was naked on Facebook. He was going to jail. His mother would have to get witch doctors to resurrect him, so she could kill him after he had killed himself.
The officer squeezed a device on his shoulder. “We’ve got the boy,” he said, which puzzled the hell out of Daniel.
“Where’s your sister?” the cop asked him. The other cop banged on the open door before barging in. Daniel heard him shouting for the music to be turned off, which it quickly was. With the bass gone, the howling wind became clearer and louder. Upstairs, there was the thunder of frightened kids scampering.
“She’s inside, I think.”
“Stay here,” the officer said.
“Is something wrong?” Daniel didn’t know why, but he had a sudden pang of fear that something bad had happened to his mom. Why were the officers there for him, specifically?
More blue lights pulled up in the cul-de-sac. Daniel could barely hear the thump of their car doors before more flashlights jounced through the swirling wind and toward the house. He waited on the stoop while cars were cranked, kids piling into vehicles, officers shining lights on faces so that they seemed to hover over the ground, bodiless. A complex weave and shuffle of parked cars began, of kids checked for varying levels of sobriety, of two boys led off to one of the police cars. Someone drunkenly tried to crank their car twice, setting off a buzzing rattle. Jeremy Stevens’s party was disintegrating, but with something like a controlled chaos. Like a forced evacuation.
“Daniel!”
He turned to see Roby and Jada sliding out the front door around a cluster of other kids.
“What the hell?” Daniel asked. His mind was still spinning with panic, embarrassment, and confusion.
“They’re saying the storm turned, that we need to get home. C’mon, Jada’s gonna drop you—”
“I can’t.” Daniel shook his head. “Zola’s here, and the cops are looking for her. They told me to stay.”
“The cops are looking for you?” Jada asked.
Daniel noticed for the first time that two of her buttons were fastened to the wrong holes, giving her shirt a large, open wrinkle. A wave of jealousy crashed over all the other emotions he was feeling.
“Maybe your parents sent for you,” Roby said. He looked out to the end of the cul-de-sac. “They seem more interested in getting us home safely than busting up the party.”
Daniel saw that he was right. His mom’s car was with Hunter, his stepdad’s in the shop, so he had to—
He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. “I’ve gotta tell Hunter,” he said. Daniel vaguely recalled that this was why he’d come outside to begin with. He watched his empty bars, waiting for them to return.
“I’ve got nothing,” Roby said, looking at his own phone.
A branch snapped off up in the trees and crashed into the yard. It sounded even worse and closer for not being able to see it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jada said, tugging on Roby’s arm.
“You coming?” Roby asked.
Daniel looked back toward the front door. “I can’t, man. I’ve gotta wait for Zola.” Daniel looked down at his backwards shirt, the smell of beer ripe from his spill. “I’m so fucked,” he said.
“I’ll text you as soon as my cell works.”
Jada pulled Roby down Jeremy Stevens’s front steps.
“You guys be careful!” Daniel hollered after them. He shielded his eyes as a blustery gust churned up the dirt and sandy gravel trapped in the pocket of brick by the front door. More people spilled out and filed past, most of them holding and cursing their cell phones, the fun and excitement drained out of the air, leaving just the howling wind to chase them all home.
10
“I guess my mom called you?”
Daniel sat in the front seat of the squad car. He faced the side window as he spoke to keep his beer breath from puffing over toward the cop. Zola sat in the back, snapping her phone’s keyboard open and shut, over and over.
“I’m friends with your dad,” the cop said. “We had calls from quite a few concerned parents, actually, so I was heading this way anyhow.”
“You know my dad?” Daniel asked. He somehow doubted that, unless fingerprinting had been involved.
“Stepdad. Sorry.” The cop glanced over at him. Daniel saw it in the reflection of the window. “Carlton and I went to school together.”
“Why won’t my phone work?” Zola asked. Daniel turned and saw her leaning forward, her fingers wrapped around the open window of the Plexiglas barrier rising up from behind the seat.
“One of the towers lost power, and there’s too much demand—” The officer glanced back at Zola. “There’s a ton of people trying to make calls all at once. Don’t worry, they’re working on it.”
“So the storm’s heading this way?”
Daniel peered through the windshield at the dimly lit trees bending on the sides of the road. Branches and leaves were already scattered along the shoulder and on the pavement ahead. It looked like any one of the dozen tropical storms and near-misses he’d seen while growing up in Beaufort. The city hadn’t had a direct hit since the fifties, hadn’t had a major pass since Hugo. This was supposed to be just another windy weekend in an unusually banal hurricane season. Downed trees and lots of rain and excellent surf—
“It looks like it’s heading right for us,” the officer said. “As soon as I drop you two off, I’m hunkering down with my family. Lots of folk are trying to evacuate, but it’s too late to do that safely. The interstate is jammed.”
“Evacuate? I thought Anna was heading for Florida.”
The officer turned on his blinker and swerved into Daniel’s neighborhood. “This morning, it was looking more like Georgia. Then this low pressure north of us pulled it more our way. It’s been churning in the Gulf Stream for half a day and picking up steam. They’re saying it might be a category three or four when it la
nds.”
Zola stuck her face by the window in the Plexiglas. “I still can’t reach anyone,” she said.
Daniel spun around in his seat. “Forget about your phone,” he said. “Who’re you calling after ten anyway?”
“I wanna make sure Monica got home okay.”
“We’re going to make sure everyone gets home, don’t worry.” The officer steered into their driveway and hit his siren for half a second, sending out a high-pitched bleep. Lights came on in the foyer, spilled out around the front door, and then their mom was down the stoop, her blazer flapping in the wind.
Daniel popped out the door and walked her way. Zola cried out at not being able to open the doors. The officer consoled her through the window as he stepped back to let her out.
“Are you okay?” Daniel’s mom asked. She grabbed his shoulder and studied his face.
“I’m fine, Mom. It’s not like anything’s happened yet. It’s just a storm.”
“Have you been drinking?”
Carlton joined them on the stoop. He hurried down to speak with the officer.
“I had a sip of someone else’s,” Daniel lied. “Just to taste it.”
“Get in the house,” his mother said sternly.
“Are either of your phones working?” Zola asked as she stormed up after them.
Their mother shook her head.
“Where’s Hunter?” Daniel asked. He filed inside the house as his mom waved them along.
“He’s staying at his girlfriend’s. I told him I didn’t want him driving in this.”
“It’s just a little wind,” Daniel complained. He kicked off his shoes and plopped onto the sofa as Carlton came back inside, shutting the door hard against the wind.
“Is that it?” Zola asked.
Daniel followed her wide eyes and looked toward the TV. It was the weather channel, the word “MUTE” in green letters across the bottom. It showed a satellite image of Anna overlaid with the standard oblong, concentric circles of varying colors. A chart on the side gave wind speed. Daniel ignored all of that. All he saw was the size and shape of the thing. Anna was the size of Georgia and South Carolina put together. As the time lapse went back twelve hours and ticked forward, he watched it grow before his very eyes. It went from a disorganized patch of white with the barest hint of an eye to a killer buzzsaw with a perfect circle in the center.