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Show Twisters . . . 38 to an end, had come to an end and so would we, any minute. Then I felt Ryan's fat fingers close around one of mine. He pulled my hand to his mouth and started sucking on my finger. It made me cry. The tears ran down my cheeks and onto his head. With the whole world blowing to pieces around us, Ryan took my hand and made me feel better. Afterward, neither Arthur nor I was able to say how long we huddled there in the basement shower. "A tornado's forward speed is generally thirty to fifty miles an hour," the meteorologist had told us. Our tornado's forward speed was zero. It parked right there on Sand Crane Drive. Five minutes or ten, we couldn't tell, but it seemed like an hour. Roaring and humming and shrieking, that twister wound up right on top of us. I'll never be that scared again as long as I live. Neither will Arthur. When at last that terrifying noise let up, Arthur jerked out from under the blanket, leaned across me to the opening of the shower and vomited into the broken glass and sheetrock. The glow from the half-buried flashlight showed his head bobbing again and again. Squeamish as I am about something like that, I wasn't revolted. I wondered if I had wet my pants myself, but I couldn't tell for sure because water had started rising under us in the shower. My shoes and jeans were both soaked, I had to move Ryan, who was wriggling to be put down, way up on my shoulder, "Arthur," I said, my voice shaking, but thinking to encourage him, "we made it . . . we're alive!" I looked away as he heaved again, I was so glad to be alive, but it wasn't the time to celebrate. |