Finally, Forever by Katie Kacvinsky Read Free Book Online

shouts and I agree with her. The hail sounds like a stream of bullets hitting our car. I look at the speedometer and I’m barely going thirty miles an hour.
    “We’ll be fine,” I say to myself and swallow. We coast down a blurry, almost invisible road. The headlights carve a few yards of our path at a time.  
    A lightning bolt hits the ground with a cracking fizz and thunder screams with rage. Dylan unzips her backpack and pulls out her camera. She unbuckles her seatbelt so she can turn around to face the backseat. 
    “What are you doing?” I shout to be heard over the hail.
    “It’s one of nature’s greatest photo shoots,” she yells and looks over at me. “I didn’t know you were scared of storms,” she says.
    “Not if I’m in a basement cellar. Driving through tornado valley’s a little different,” I shout as I struggle to keep the car steady on the flooding road.
    An alarm warning wails again over the radio. As if I’m not freaked out enough, a man’s voice, sounding as dark and ominous as the Gatekeeper of Hell, reports that two funnel clouds have been spotted and one tornado touched down in York county.
    “SEEK SHELTER,” the voice commands. I’m waiting for him to add, “OR ROT IN HELL.”
    Shelter. I strain my eyes to see through the curtain of rain. All I see is darkness, as if the clouds have fallen on top of us, smothering us inside.
    “I should pull over,” I say, and my foot eases up on the accelerator. I glance at the clock and it ’s only 9 PM. We’ve barely been driving for two hours. Operation Avoid Dylan Plan: Failure.
    All of the other cars on the highway barrel along, seemingly unaffected, as if evening tornados are part of their daily work commute.
    “Will you grab the wheel?” I ask Dylan. I pick up my phone and scroll for the map. The car starts to hydroplane and I grab the wheel back and my phone slips through my fingers, in between the car seat and the console.
    “Crap. F—”
    Mother Nature muffles my curse with a lightning bolt and simultaneous burst of thunder. She must hate profanity. The storm is on top of us, like a monster crawling at us from the sky.
    “Do you have a phone?” I ask Dylan. 
    “It’s in the trunk,” she says. She rests a hand on my arm. For once, I’m not affected b y her touch. Fear of death is great for defusing sexual tension.
    “ Gray, we’re fine,” she says. The hail finally quiets down, replaced by a hard rain. I search for a green exit sign in the distance.
    “I grew up around these things,” she says. “There are plenty of signs before a tornado hits.”
    “Like what?” I ask.
    “First, the sky needs to turn a yellowish-green color.”
    I look out at the green tinted clouds. “Okay.”
    “There also needs to be this creepy, foreboding silence that happens right before it touches down.” 
    I listen and it sounds like the rain is letting up. The wind gusts are subsiding. I can finally see the road clearly.
    “Yeah?” I ask.
    “Then, you see the funnel cloud in the sky. It starts to roll over on itself, spinning into a tight spiral just like a spider spins webbing around its victims.”
    I stare at her. The image is absolutely terrifying.
    “Finally, the funnel cloud turns into a twister and touches the ground,” she says easily, as if this science discovery conversation has nothing to do with our current scenario.
    I can’t take my eyes off of the road to examine the sky for funnel clouds, so I’ll have to trust her on this one.
    “And the last sign is, you hear the s ound,” Dylan says. “It’s like a train. That’s when you know it’s time to run.”
    I swallow. There is an undeniable roar behind us. Dylan and I turn to look over our shoulders. In a streak of lighting we see a dangling twister in the distance.
    We both scream and Dylan lifts her camera and turns to record it and I see a green exit sign ahead. I step on the accelerator.
    “You should never try to outdrive a tornado,” Dylan